Honoré de Balzac, born May 20, 1799 in Tours, France, was a pivotal French novelist who pioneered in showcasing societal landscapes through fiction.
Birthed into a peculiar family dynamic, Balzac sought refuge in literature during an affection-deprived childhood.
Eschewing a legal career, he ventured into writing, initially producing unsigned sensational novels to sustain himself while shouldering burgeoning debts from failed businesses.
Later, with the acclaimed “Le Dernier Chouan” and the allegorical “La Peau de chagrin”, he garnered fame, delving deep into the psyche of diverse characters in “The Human Comedy” series.
Balzac’s life, marked by relentless work, romantic turmoil and eventual marriage to Madame Hanska, concluded on August 18, 1850.
I have listed below the top quotes by Honore de Balzac.
Best Honore de Balzac Quotes
All human power is a compound of time and patience. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
It is easy to sit up and take notice, what is difficult is getting up and taking action. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Love is a game in which one always cheats. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Finance, like time, devours its own children. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Passion is born deaf and dumb. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
Love is the poetry of the senses. ~ Honore de Balzac.
All happiness depends on courage and work. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn’t, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Rare is the man who suffers no remorse as he passes from the state of confidant to that of rival. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Numbers are intellectual witnesses that belong only to mankind. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Famous Honore de Balzac Quotes
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. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Nobody loves a woman because she is handsome or ugly, stupid or intelligent. We love because we love. ~ Honore de Balzac.
It is quite right what they say: the three most beautiful sights in the world are a ship in full sail, a galloping horse, and a woman dancing. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Rich women need not fear old age; their gold can always create about them any feelings necessary to their happiness. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man’s entire existence. ~ Honore de Balzac.
The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
I am not deep, but I am very wide. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Inspiring Honore de Balzac Quotes
Woman is a most charming creature, who changes her heart as easily as she does her gloves. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Love is like some fresh spring, first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation. ~ Honore de Balzac.
The first thing necessary to win the heart of a woman is opportunity. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
Women like to perform prodigies, break rocks, and soften natures which seem of iron. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
A married woman is a slave you must know how to seat upon a throne. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant. ~ Honore de Balzac.
God reveals himself unfailingly to the thoughtful seeker. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Realistic Honore de Balzac Quotes
Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation. ~ Honore de Balzac.
One hour of love has a whole life in it. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Resignation is a daily suicide. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Reading brings us unknown friends. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Top Honore de Balzac Quotes
True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Noble hearts are neither jealous nor afraid because jealousy spells doubt and fear spells pettiness. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Envy is the most stupid of vices, for there is no single advantage to be gained from it. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Someday you will find out that there is far more happiness in another’s happiness than in your own. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact. ~ Honore de Balzac.
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.
The more one judges, the less one loves. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Popular Honore de Balzac Quotes
The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Hope is a memory that desires, the memory is a memory that has enjoyed. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true. ~ Honore de Balzac.
How natural it is to destroy what we cannot possess, to deny what we do not understand, and to insult what we envy! ~ Honoré de Balzac.
Talent is a flame, but genius is a fire. ~ Honore de Balzac.
There are two histories : official history, lying, and then secret history, where you find the real causes of events. ~ Honore de Balzac.
There are no principles; there are only events. There is no good and bad, there are only circumstances. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Love is the only passion which suffers neither past nor future. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Carelessness in dressing is moral suicide. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Powerful Honore de Balzac Quotes
Our greatest fears lie in anticipation. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of ignorance. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
Behind every great fortune there is a crime. ~ Honore de Balzac.
The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
Motivational Honore de Balzac Quotes
A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning. ~ Honore de Balzac.
The privilege of feeling at home everywhere belongs only to kings, wolves and robbers. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
No navigator has yet traced lines of latitude and longitude on the conjugal sea. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Squeeze marriage as much as you like, you will never extract anything from it but fun for bachelors and boredom for husbands. ~ Honore de Balzac.
To speak of love is to make love. ~ Honore de Balzac.
The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the countenance. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Wise Honore de Balzac Quotes
A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Life cannot go on without much forgetting. ~ Honore de Balzac.
If love is the first of passions, it is because it flatters all the rest of them at the same time. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
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.
The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Possibly the words materialism and spirituality express two sides of one and the same fact. ~ Honore de Balzac.
We do not attach ourselves lastingly to anything that has not cost us care, labor or longing. ~ Honore de Balzac.
Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself. ~ Honore de Balzac.
We talked together through that silence in the language of thought. Nothing is more rapturous than these mute conversations. ~ Honoré de Balzac.
So these were the 80 top Honore de Balzac quotes and sayings.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Hermann Hesse quotes and Hillary Clinton quotes.
