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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 only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion it is a joy of every moment.”

— Honore de Balzac

Mom

All Quotes by Honore de Balzac

“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.”

— Honore de Balzac

Great

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

— Honore de Balzac

Death

“Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!”

— Honore de Balzac

Peace

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

— Honore de Balzac

Love

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

— Honore de Balzac

Legal

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

— Honore de Balzac

Finance

“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

Great

“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

“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

Great

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

— Honore de Balzac

Smile

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

— Honore de Balzac

Forgiveness

“Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.”

— Honore de Balzac

Equality

“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

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

— Honore de Balzac

Anniversary

“At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist there can only be promise of the coming woman.”

— Honore de Balzac

Beauty

“Clouds symbolize the veils that shroud God.”

— Honore de Balzac

God

“When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.”

— Honore de Balzac

Great

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

— Honore de Balzac

Nature

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

— Honore de Balzac

Finance

“Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.”

— Honore de Balzac

Friendship