Honore De Balzac
Honore de Balzac (May 20, 1799 - August 18, 1850), born Honore Balzac, was a nineteenth-century French novelist and playwright. His work, much of which is a sequence (or Roman-fleuve) of almost 100 novels and plays collectively entitled La Comedie humaine, is a broad, often satirical panorama of French society, particularly the Petit bourgeoisie, in the years after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815-namely the period of the Restoration (1815-1830) and the July Monarchy (1830-1848). Along with Gustave Flaubert (whose work he influenced), Balzac is generally regarded as a founding father of realism in European literature. Balzac's novels, most of which are farcical comedies, feature a large cast of well-defined characters, and descriptions in exquisite detail of the scene of action.
30 Quotes
Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most of thought believe in providence.
— Honore De Balzac
If those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring, and youth, the former from the year, the latter from human life.
— Honore De Balzac
All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.
— Honore De Balzac
Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.
— Honore De Balzac
We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.
— Honore De Balzac
Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.
— 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
Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
— 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
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
— Honore De Balzac
Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.
— Honore De Balzac
You may imitate, but never counterfeit.
— Honore De Balzac
To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.
— Honore De Balzac
I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.
— Honore De Balzac
To promote laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect.
— Honore De Balzac
The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.
— Honore De Balzac
Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.
— Honore De Balzac
A woman must be a genius to create a good husband.
— Honore De Balzac
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
Modesty is the conscience of the body.
— Honore De Balzac
Finance, like time, devours its own children.
— Honore De Balzac
A mother who is really a mother is never free.
— Honore De Balzac
If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.
— Honore De Balzac
Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.
— Honore De Balzac
In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.
— Honore De Balzac
Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
— Honore De Balzac
Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.
— Honore De Balzac
Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.
— 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 out virtues.
— Honore De Balzac
Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.
— Honore De Balzac