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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

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

More quotes by Honore de Balzac

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If we study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment - giving to that word its exact significance.
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Nothing is so discreet as a young face, for nothing is less mobile it has the serenity, the surface smoothness, and the freshnessof a lake. There is no character in women's faces before the age of thirty.
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What moralist can deny that well-bred and vicious people are much more agreeable than their virtuous counterparts? Having crimes to atone for, they provisionally solicit indulgence by showing leniency toward the defects of their judges. Thus they pass for excellent folk.
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We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.
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Nothing can afford a woman greater pleasure than to hear tender words of love. The strictest, most devout woman will listen even if she must not answer.
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We must certainly acknowledge that solitude is a fine thing but it is a pleasure to have some one who can answer, and to whom we can say, from time to time, that solitude is a fine thing.
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One of the glories of society is to have created woman where Nature had made only a female to have created a continuity of desire where Nature thought only of perpetuating the species and, in fine, to have invented love.
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A lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second with a husband it runs the other way.
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No navigator has yet traced lines of latitude and longitude on the conjugal sea.
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Carelessness in dressing is moral suicide.
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People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.
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How sternly we reproach virtue for its failings, how indulgent we are to the better qualities of vice!
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To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself, will always be the text of the life of woman.
Honore de Balzac
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A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes it is the life of another that we revere within us then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all.
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When a woman starts talking about her duty, her regard for appearances, and her respect for religion, she raises so many bulwarks which she delights to see captured by storm.
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We flew back home like swallows. 'Is it happiness that makes us so light?' Agathe asked.
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But woman brings disorder into society through passion.
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The privilege of feeling at home everywhere belongs only to kings, wolves and robbers.
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To forget is the great secret of strong creative natures to forget is the way nature herself who knows no past and who at every hour begins the mysteries of her untiring labors afresh.
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No man has ever yet discovered the way to give friendly advice to any woman, not even to his own wife.
Honore de Balzac