Quote

Your modest savant smiles as he says to his admirers: What have I done? Nothing. Man does not invent a force, he directs it.

Honore de Balzac

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Force
Savants
Action
Admirers
Doe
Directs
Nothing
Admirer
Done
Smiles
Men
Invent
Modest
Says
Savant

More quotes by Honore de Balzac

Image
Nothing about me surprises me.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Art's greatest efforts are invariably a timid counterfeit of Nature.
Honore de Balzac
Image
A wife is property that one acquires by contract, she is transferable, because possession of her requires title in fact, woman is, so to speak, only man's appendage consequently, slice, cut, clip her, you have all rights to her.
Honore de Balzac
Image
No man has ever yet discovered the way to give friendly advice to any woman, not even to his own wife.
Honore de Balzac
Image
No society is complete without some victim, a creature to pity, to jeer at, to scorn or to protect.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Few men are raised in our estimation by being too closely examined.
Honore de Balzac
Image
In the medical profession a horse and carriage are more necessary than any scientific knowledge.
Honore de Balzac
Image
For young people always begin by loving exaggeration, that infirmity of noble minds.
Honore de Balzac
Image
I am not deep, but I am very wide.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Any man, however blase or depraved, finds his love kindled anew when he sees himself threatened by a rival.
Honore de Balzac
Image
To promote laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect.
Honore de Balzac
Image
One admirable trait in women is their lack of illusions about themselves. They never reason about their most blameworthy actions their feelings carry them away. Even their dissimulation comes naturally to them, and in them crime is free of all baseness. Most of the time they simply do not know how it happened.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Envy lurks at the bottom of the human heart like a viper in its hole.
Honore de Balzac
Image
If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings to know merely the outward events of a man's life would only serve to make a chronological table-a fool's notion of history.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Like hunger, physical love is a necessity. But man's appetite for amour is never so regular or so sustained as his appetite for the delights of the table.
Honore de Balzac
Image
A lui la foi, a' elle le doute, a' elle le fardeau le plus lourd: la femme ne souffre-t-elle pas toujours pour deux? For him, faith for her, doubt and for her theheavier load: does not the woman always suffer for both?
Honore de Balzac
Image
A man may and ought to pride himself more on his will than on his talent.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Men are such dupes by choice, that he who would impose upon others never need be at a loss to find ready victims.
Honore de Balzac
Image
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