Quote

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

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
Secret
Serve
History
Notion
Feelings
Merely
Chronological
Must
Judging
Sorrows
Make
Sorrow
Outward
Would
Fool
Table
Men
Thoughts
Tables
Life
Events
Judge

More quotes by Honore de Balzac

Image
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.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Noble hearts are neither jealous nor afraid because jealousy spells doubt and fear spells pettiness.
Honore de Balzac
Image
But does not happiness come from the soul within?
Honore de Balzac
Image
A knowledge of mankind and of things that surround us gives us that second education which proves far move valuable than our first because it alone turns out a truly accomplished man.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Men are perfectly willing to abandon a woman but they refuse to be abandoned by her.
Honore de Balzac
Image
A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love.
Honore de Balzac
Image
When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Those sweetly smiling angels with pensive looks, innocent faces, and cash-boxes for hearts.
Honore de Balzac
Image
A mother who is really a mother is never free.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Man's condition is horrible because, no matter what form his happiness may take, it arises from some species of ignorance.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Love is perhaps no more than gratitude for pleasure.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Numbers are intellectual witnesses that belong only to mankind.
Honore de Balzac
Image
It is not hope but despair that gives us the measure of our ambitions. We may yield secretly to beautiful poems of hope but grief looms start and stripped of all veils.
Honore de Balzac
Image
A young bride is like a plucked flower but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.
Honore de Balzac
Image
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.
Honore de Balzac
Image
The fashions we call English in Paris are French in London, and vice versa. Franco-British hostility vanishes when it comes to questions of words and clothing. God save the King is a tune composed by Lully for a chorus in a play by Racine.
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
How sternly we reproach virtue for its failings, how indulgent we are to the better qualities of vice!
Honore de Balzac