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Honore de Balzac

63 quotes

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a French novelist and playwright whose ambitious series of interlinked novels and stories, collectively titled *La Comédie humaine*, paints a sweeping portrait of French society in the decades after the fall of Napoleon. Balzac's keen observation of human nature and social dynamics influenced generations of writers.

“It is as absurd to say that a man can't love one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to play the same piece of music.”

— Honore de Balzac

Music

All Quotes by Honore de Balzac

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

— Honore de Balzac

Great

“Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.”

— Honore de Balzac

Art

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

— Honore de Balzac

Love

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

— Honore de Balzac

Marriage

“Death unites as well as separates it silences all paltry feeling.”

— Honore de Balzac

Death

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

— Honore de Balzac

Power

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

— Honore de Balzac

Art

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

— Honore de Balzac

Art

“No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.”

— Honore de Balzac

Marriage

“Power is action the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.”

— Honore de Balzac

Power

“Towns find it as hard as houses of business to rise again from ruin.”

— Honore de Balzac

Business

“Finance, like time, devours its own children.”

— Honore de Balzac

Finance

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

— Honore de Balzac

Love

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

— Honore de Balzac

Anniversary

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

— Honore de Balzac

Good

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

— Honore de Balzac

Marriage

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

— Honore de Balzac

Love

“Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.”

— Honore de Balzac

Society

“All humanity is passion without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.”

— Honore de Balzac

Art

“Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.”

— Honore de Balzac

Nature