Honore de Balzac

The life of a man who deliberately runs through his fortune often becomes a business speculation; his friends, his pleasures, patrons, and acquaintances are his capital.

The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.

Old maids, having never bent their temper or their lives to other lives and other tempers, as woman's destiny requires, have for the most part a mania for making everything about them bend to them.

If those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring, and youth, the former from the year, the latter from human life.

Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?

Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.

A husband who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely concealed.

The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human.

Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.

It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action.

A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.

Towns find it as hard as houses of business to rise again from ruin.