Virtue is not a thing you can have by halves; it is or it is not. Honore de Balzac More Quotes by Honore de Balzac More Quotes From Honore de Balzac A lover teaches a wife all her husband has kept from her. Honore de Balzac wifehusbandlovers Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence. Honore de Balzac politicalcolorwriting Even beauty cannot always palliate eccentricity. Honore de Balzac eccentricity A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love. Honore de Balzac faithfulechoesvoice The love of nature is the only love that does not deceive human hopes. Honore de Balzac deceivingnaturedoe No society is complete without some victim, a creature to pity, to jeer at, to scorn or to protect. Honore de Balzac pitysocietyvictim Le bonheur engloutit nos forces, comme le malheur e teint nos vertus. Happiness engulfs our strength, just as misfortune extinguishes our virtues. Honore de Balzac misfortunesforcevirtue When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa. Honore de Balzac vicesliteraturelaw Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other. Honore de Balzac friendshipnegativethinking Towns find it as hard as houses of business to rise again from ruin. Honore de Balzac ruinsliteraturehouse Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love. Honore de Balzac painsufferingmen The woman you buy takes a great deal of money. The woman who gives herself to you takes all your money. Honore de Balzac dealsgiving A woman's greatest charm consists in a constant appeal to a man's generosity by a gracious declaration of helplessness which fills him with pride and awakens the most magnificent feelings in his heart. Honore de Balzac prideheartmen The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the others - existences which the spirit alone remembers, for Matter has no memory for spiritual things. Honore de Balzac karmaspiritualmemories To forget is the great secret of strong creative natures; to forget is the way nature herself who knows no past and who at every hour begins the mysteries of her untiring labors afresh. Honore de Balzac strongcreativepast It is no sin to be tempted; the wickedness lies in being overcome. Honore de Balzac wickednessovercominglying [Raphael's] great superiority is due to the instinctive sense which, in him, seems to desire to shatter form. Form is, in his figures, what it is in ourselves, an interpreter for the communication of ideas and sensations, an exhaustless source of poetic inspiration. Every figure is a world in itself, a portrait of which the original appeared in a sublime vision, in a flood of light, pointed to by an inward voice, laid bare by a divine finger which showed what the sources of expression had been in the whole past life of the subject. Honore de Balzac communicationinspirationpast Foppery, being the chronic condition of women, is not so much noticed as it is when it breaks out on the person of the male bird. Honore de Balzac malesbreak-outbird Beauty is the greatest of human powers. Any power without counterbalance or control becomes autocratic and leads to abuse and to folly. Despotism in a government is insanity; in woman, fantasy. Honore de Balzac governmentpowerbeauty Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it. Honore de Balzac keyboardswomenstudy
