Quote

Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual. Misfortune is a stepping stone for a genius, a piscina for a Christian, a treasure for a man of parts, and an abyss for a weakling.

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
Never
Stones
Misfortunes
Men
Parts
Outcomes
Depends
Stone
Genius
Certainty
Weakling
Events
Entirely
Stepping
Upon
Treasure
Misfortune
Christian
Absolutes
Abyss
Individual
Absolute
Outcome

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The more you judge, the less you love.
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It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion it is a joy of every moment.
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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.
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While seeking out the dead, I see nothing but the living.
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Old maids claw as cats do. They not only inflict wounds but experience pleasure in doing so. Nor will they fail to remind their victims of the blood drawn.
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For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure? Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure? Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy?
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Kindness steers no easy course. Attributing it to character, we seldom recognize the secret efforts of a noble heart, whereas we reward really wicked people for the evil they refrain from committing.
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A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse he may be penitent and amend but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad his vileness pervades every moment of his life
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A man's own vanity is a swindler that never lacks for a dupe.
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But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.
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The events of human life, whether public or private, are so intimately linked to architecture that most observers can reconstruct nations or individuals in all the truth of their habits from the remains of their monuments or from their domestic relics.
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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.
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People who climb from one rung of society to another can never do anything simply.
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Hatred like love feeds on the merest trifles.
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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!
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True lovers know how trifling a thing is money yet how difficult to blend with love!
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The election of a deputy to the Legislature offers a noble and majestic spectacle comparable only to the delivery of a child. It involves the same efforts, the same impurities, the same laceration, and the same triumph.
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A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.
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A Creole woman is like a child, she wants to possess everything immediately like a child, she would set fire to a house in order to fry an egg. In her languor, she thinks of nothing when passionately aroused, she thinks of any act possible or impossible.
Honore de Balzac
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Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.
Honore de Balzac