Quotes by Honore de Balzac

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

— Honore de Balzac

Wisdom

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

Love

The more one judges, the less one loves.

— Honore de Balzac

Wisdom

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

— Honore de Balzac

Wisdom

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

— Honore de Balzac

Love

Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.

— Honore de Balzac

Love

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.

— Honore de Balzac

Love

Nobody loves a woman because she is handsome or ugly, stupid or intelligent. We love because we love.

— Honore de Balzac

Love

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

— Honore de Balzac

Wisdom

Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.

— Honore de Balzac

Wisdom

Love is the poetry of the senses.

— Honore de Balzac

Love

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

Happiness

The fact is that love is of two kinds, one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other.

— Honore de Balzac

Love

Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.

— Honore de Balzac

Love

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

Love

It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.

— Honore de Balzac

Wisdom

Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.

— Honore de Balzac

Love

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.

— Honore de Balzac

Wisdom

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

— Honore de Balzac

Wisdom

Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

— Honore de Balzac

Wisdom

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

— Honore de Balzac

Wisdom

The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.

— Honore de Balzac

Life

First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time.

— Honore de Balzac

Love

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

— Honore de Balzac

Wisdom