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Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.

Honore de Balzac

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Honore de Balzac
Age: 52 †
Born: 1799
Born: May 20
Died: 1851
Died: August 19
Art Critic
Dramaturge
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Prosaist
Writer
Tours
France
Balzac
Horace de Saint- Aubin
Onoreh deh Balzaḳ
Lord R'Hoone
Ônôrē de Balzaq
Jeune ceélibataire
Onore de Balzak
Honorato De Balzac
H. Balzak
Honoreé De Balzac
H. Balzac
Horace de S.- Aubin
Honoriusz Balzac
Un Jeune ceélibataire
Lord O'Rhoone
Ūnūrīh dī Balzāk
R'Hoone
Onore de Bal'zak
Hônôrê đơ Banzăc
Honore de Balzak
de. Balzac
Nature
Sheer
Anything
Indifference
Reason
Genuine
Human
Endure
Humans
Humility
Perhaps
Suffering
Inflict
Whether
Helplessness

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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.
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They [twin beds] are the most stupid, the most perfidious, and the most dangerous invention in the world. Shame and a curse on who thought of them.
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Poetry is only born after painful journeys into the vast regions of thought.
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All happiness depends on courage and work.
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No woman has ever existed who did not know perfectly well in her heart what to expect from the superiority or inferiority of a rival.
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In France everything is a matter for jest. People make quips about the scaffold, about Napoleon's defeat on the banks of The Beresina, and about the barricades of our revolutions. So, at the assizes of the Last Judgment, there will always be a Frenchmen to crack a joke.
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Necessity is often the spur to genius.
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True love is mixed up with birdlike squabbles, in which the disputants wound each other to the quick but a quarrel without animus is, on the contrary, apiece of flattery to the dupe's conceit.
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Genuine sorrows are very tranquil in appearance in the deep bed they have dug for themselves. But, seeming to slumber, they corrode the soul like that frightful acid which penetrates crystal.
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Man's condition is horrible because, no matter what form his happiness may take, it arises from some species of ignorance.
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Above all do not ask that justice be just: It is just, because it is justice. The idea of a just justice could have originated only in the brain of an anarchist.
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White hair often covers the head, but the heart that holds it is ever young.
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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.
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Women are happy to possess a man whom all women covet.
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No woman allows her lover to descend from his pedestal. Even a god is not forgiven the slightest pettiness.
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The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.
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A deist is an atheist with an eye cocked for the off-chance of some advantage.
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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.
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Few men are raised in our estimation by being too closely examined.
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The causes that govern the heart appear to be wholly alien to the results achieved. Are the forces that moved a desperate criminal the same that fill a martyr with pride, as both mount the scaffold?
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