Honore de Balzac

Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy.

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom to serve all, but love only one.

Nobody loves a woman because she is handsome or ugly, stupid or intelligent. We love because we love.

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.

Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.

Love is the poetry of the senses.

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.

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

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

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.

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

The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.

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.

There is something great and terrible about suicide.

Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.

There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.