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Art's greatest efforts are invariably a timid counterfeit of Nature.

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
Invariably
Efforts
Greatest
Effort
Art
Nature
Counterfeit
Timid

More quotes by Honore de Balzac

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Memories beautify life, but the capacity to forget makes it bearable.
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Intuition, like the rays of the sun, acts only in an inflexibly straight line it can guess right only on condition of never diverting its gaze the freaks of chance disturb it.
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How did you get back?' asked Vautrin. 'I walked,' replied Eugene. 'I wouldn't like half-pleasures, myself,' observed the tempter. 'I'd want to go there in my own carriage, have my own box, and come back in comfort. All or nothing, that's my motto.' 'And a very good one,' said Madame Vauquer.
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He hesitated till the last moment, but finally dropped them in the box, saying, I shall win!--the cry of a gambler, the cry of the great general, the compulsive cry that has ruined more men than it has ever saved.
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Liberty begets anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism, and despotism brings about liberty once again. Millions of human beings have perished without being able to make any of these systems triumph.
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Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.
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Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact.
Honore de Balzac
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Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps.
Honore de Balzac
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All genuinely noble women prefer truth to falsehood. As the Russians with their Czar, they are unwilling to see their idol degraded they want to be proud of the domination they accept.
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Love, according to our contemporary poets, is a privilege which two beings confer upon one another, whereby they may mutually cause one another much sorrow over absolutely nothing.
Honore de Balzac
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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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When tempted to be unfaithful, the intellectual woman will try to inspire her husband with indifference, the sentimental woman with hatred, and the passionate woman with disgust.
Honore de Balzac
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How natural it is to destroy what we cannot possess, to deny what we do not understand, and to insult what we envy!
Honore de Balzac
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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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All human beings go through a previous life... Who knows how many fleshly forms the heir of heaven occupies before he can be brought to understand the value of that silence and solitude of spiritual worlds?
Honore de Balzac
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Necessity is often the spur to genius.
Honore de Balzac
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First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time.
Honore de Balzac
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We do not attach ourselves lastingly to anything that has not cost us care, labor or longing.
Honore de Balzac
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Show me the woman, however loyal, who does not seek to rouse desire.
Honore de Balzac
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Where some one else's welfare is concerned, a young girl becomes as ingenious as a thief. Guileless where she herself is in question, and full of foresight for me,-she is like a heavenly angel forgiving the strange incomprehensible sins of earth.
Honore de Balzac