1799-1850, French Novelist
A mother who is really a mother is never free.
Honore De Balzac – [Mothers]
A woman must be a genius to create a good husband.
Honore De Balzac – [Marriage]
All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.
Honore De Balzac – [Emotions]
Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
Honore De Balzac – [Fortune]
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
Honore De Balzac – [Government]
Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.
Honore De Balzac – [Equality]
Finance, like time, devours its own children.
Honore De Balzac – [Money]
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 – [Hatred]
I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.
Honore De Balzac – [Investments]
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 – [Amusement]
If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.
Honore De Balzac – [Painters and Painting]
In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.
Honore De Balzac – [Pleasure]
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 – [Marriage]
Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.
Honore De Balzac – [Manners]
Modesty is the conscience of the body.
Honore De Balzac – [Modesty]
Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most of thought believe in providence.
Honore De Balzac – [Action]
Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.
Honore De Balzac – [Fools and Foolishness]
Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.
Honore De Balzac – [Self-acceptance]
Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
Honore De Balzac – [Friends and Friendship]
Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.
Honore De Balzac – [Passion]