Honore de Balzac

Wisdom is the understanding of celestial things to which the Spirit is brought by Love.

— Honore de Balzac

Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.

— Honore de Balzac

Man dies in despair while the Spirit dies in ecstasy.

— Honore de Balzac

The tiniest flower is a thought, — a life which corresponds to certain lineaments of the Great Whole, of which they have a constant intuition.

— Honore de Balzac

A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.

— Honore de Balzac

Clouds signify the veil of the Most High.

— Honore de Balzac

Science is the language of the Temporal world, Love is that of the Spiritual world. Thus man takes note of more than he is able to explain, while the Angelic Spirit sees and comprehends. Science depresses man; Love exalts the Angel. Science is still seeking, Love has found. Man judges Nature according to his own relations to her; the Angelic Spirit judges it in its relation to Heaven. In short, all things have a voice for the Spirit.

— Honore de Balzac

Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all.

— Honore de Balzac

We have long struggles with ourself, of which the outcome is one of our actions; they are, as it were, the inner side of human nature. This inner side is God's; the outer side belongs to men.

— Honore de Balzac

The most real of all splendors are not in outward things, they are within us.

— Honore de Balzac

Nature knows nothing but solid bodies; your science deals only with combinations of surfaces. And so nature constantly gives the lie to all your laws; can you name one to which no fact makes an exception?

— Honore de Balzac

White and shining virgin of all human virtues, ark of the covenant between earth and heaven, tender and strong companion partaking of the lion and of the lamb, Prayer! Prayer will give you the key of heaven! Bold and pure as innocence, strong, like all that is single and simple, this glorious, invincible Queen rests, nevertheless, on the material world; she takes possession of it; like the sun, she clasps it in a circle of light.

— Honore de Balzac

Tone is light in another shape. In music, instruments perform the functions of the colours employed in painting.

— Honore de Balzac

Finance, like time, devours its own children.

— Honore de Balzac

Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.

— Honore de Balzac

A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.

— Honore de Balzac

A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

— Honore de Balzac

It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment.

— Honore de Balzac

It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment.

— Honore de Balzac

The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.

— Honore de Balzac

The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.

— Honore de Balzac

Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.

— Honore de Balzac

A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.

— Honore de Balzac

A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

— Honore de Balzac

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.

— Honore de Balzac

There is no such thing as a great talent without great willpower.

— Honore de Balzac

Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.

— Honore de Balzac

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.

— Honore de Balzac

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.

— Honore de Balzac

Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.

— Honore de Balzac

There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.

— Honore de Balzac

One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.

— Honore de Balzac

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.

— Honore de Balzac

There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.

— Honore de Balzac

Glory is the sunshine of the dead

— Honore de Balzac

A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

— Honore de Balzac

I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.

— Honore de Balzac

Love is the poetry of the senses!

— Honore de Balzac

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.

— Honore de Balzac

There is something great and terrible about suicide.

— Honore de Balzac

Love is the poetry of the senses.

— Honore de Balzac

True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.

— Honore de Balzac

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.

— Honore de Balzac

The more one judges, the less one loves.

— Honore de Balzac

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.

— Honore de Balzac

Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.

— Honore de Balzac

Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man

— Honore de Balzac

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.

— Honore de Balzac

Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.

— Honore de Balzac

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.

— Honore de Balzac

In Paris the rich encounter wit ready-made, pre-digested science, and opinions already formulated, which excuse them from hand to have wit, science or opinion.

— Honore de Balzac

If we study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment — giving to that word its exact significance. Man does not create forces; he employs the only force that exists and which includes all others, namely Motion, the breath incomprehensible of the sovereign Maker of the universe.

— Honore de Balzac