Honore de Balzac

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.

Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!

But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.

Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.

A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.

Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.

Thought is a key to all treasures; the miser's gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared above this world, where my enjoyment have been intellectual joys.

It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment.

To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.

In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.

True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.

Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.