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
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

Image
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.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Love is perhaps no more than gratitude for pleasure.
Honore de Balzac
Image
No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Women are happy to possess a man whom all women covet.
Honore de Balzac
Image
The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Ah! the soft starlight of virgin eyes.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Creole women take after Europe in their intelligence, after the Tropics in the illogical violence of their passions, and after the Indies in the apathetic indolence with which they commit or suffer good and evil.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Virtue is always too much of a piece and too ignorant of those shades of feeling and of temperament that enable us to squint when we are placed in a false position.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Glory and fame mean twelve thousand francs' worth of paid articles in the newspapers and five thousand crowns' worth of dinners.
Honore de Balzac
Image
To promote laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect.
Honore de Balzac
Image
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.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Women, when they have made a sheep of a man, always tell him that he is a lion with a will of iron.
Honore de Balzac
Image
By dint of making sacrifices, a man grows interested in the person who exacts them. Great ladies, like courtesans, know this truth by instinct.
Honore de Balzac
Image
The union of a want and a sentiment.
Honore de Balzac
Image
A deist is an atheist with an eye cocked for the off-chance of some advantage.
Honore de Balzac
Image
A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Le coeur d'une me' re est un ab|me au fond duquel se trouve toujours un pardon. A mother'sheart isanabyss atthebottomof whichthere is always forgiveness.
Honore de Balzac
Image
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.
Honore de Balzac
Image
Only when one has learned to acknowledge that wiser minds have made better words to come out of our mouths may we truly, then, begin to speak them.
Honore de Balzac
Image
As a rule, only the poor are generous.
Honore de Balzac