Honor� de Balzac
France
20 May 1799 // 18 Aug 1850
Writer
20 May 1799 // 18 Aug 1850
Writer
Quotes
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To speak of love is to make love
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
Thought is the only treasure that God sets outside all power and keeps to serve as a secret link among the unhappy
There are two kinds of poets: those who feel and those who express themselves. The former are happier
There are as many mediocrities exalted through pity as masters decried through envy
The wounds of self-love turn incurable when the oxide of self-love gets into them
The world will avenge itself upon all happiness in which it has no share
The winter's frost must rend the burr of the nut before the fruit is seen. So adversity tempers the human heart, to discover its real worth
The press is like a woman: sublime when it lies, it will not let go until it has forced you to believe it. The public, like a foolish husband, always succumbs
The man whom fate employs to awaken love in the heart of a young girl is often unaware of his work and therefore leaves it uncompleted
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays
Essays