The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the countenance.
— Honore de Balzac
What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended?
Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.
A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.
Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.
There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.
The more one judges, the less one loves.
Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.
One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.
In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.
Finance, like time, devours its own children.
We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.
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.
When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.
Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul.
All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.
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.
Those who spend too fast never grow rich.
The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.
There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile.
To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.
The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.
Love is the poetry of the senses.
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.
Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.
If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.
Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.
The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.
A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.
No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.
Modesty is the conscience of the body.
The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the woman.
Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!
There is something great and terrible about suicide.
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.
A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.
Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.
What is art? Nature concentrated.
Love is a game in which one always cheats.
Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.
Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.
A mother who is really a mother is never free.
Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.
I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.
Nobody loves a woman because she is handsome or ugly, stupid or intelligent. We love because we love.
A lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second; with a husband it runs the other way.
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.
An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.
