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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.

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“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

Future

All Quotes by Honore de Balzac

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

— Honore de Balzac

Love

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

— Honore de Balzac

Forgiveness

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

— Honore de Balzac

Art

“The life of a man who deliberately runs through his fortune often becomes a business speculation his friends, his pleasures, patrons, and acquaintances are his capital.”

— Honore de Balzac

Business

“Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.”

— Honore de Balzac

Great

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

— Honore de Balzac

Legal

“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

“There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile.”

— Honore de Balzac

Smile

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

— Honore de Balzac

Alone

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

— Honore de Balzac

Time

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

— Honore de Balzac

Marriage

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

— Honore de Balzac

Finance

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

— Honore de Balzac

Art

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

— Honore de Balzac

Business

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

— Honore de Balzac

Finance

“What is art? Nature concentrated.”

— Honore de Balzac

Art

“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

Time

“A mother who is really a mother is never free.”

— Honore de Balzac

Parenting

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

— Honore de Balzac

Society

“A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.”

— Honore de Balzac

Business