Honoré de Balzac

“If we all said to people's faces what we say behind their backs, society would be impossible.”

“Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.”

“The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.”

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”

“The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.”

“Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.”

“Our greatest fears lie in anticipation.”

“A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.”

“Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.”

“Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.”

“Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.”

“Glory is the sun of the dead.”

“Love is the poetry of the senses.”

“When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes. When they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.”

“Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.”

“A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.”

“Passion is universal humanity. Without it, religion, history, romance and art would be useless.”

“The more one judges, the less one loves.”

“Despair is the greatest of our errors.”

“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.”