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Home  »  Dictionary of Quotations  »  Balzac

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Balzac

Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice.

Evasion is unworthy of us, and is always the intimate of equivocation.

Even beauty cannot palliate eccentricity.

God is the great composer; men are only the performers. Those grand pieces which are played on earth were composed in heaven.

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

Most men of action incline to fatalism, and most men of thought believe in Providence.

Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.

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

Poetry is only born after painful journeys into the vast regions of thought.

The errors of woman spring almost always from her faith in the good or her confidence in the true.

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all and love but one.

To be bodily tranquil, to speak little, and to digest without effort are absolutely necessary to grandeur of mind or of presence, or to proper development of genius.

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are.

Would they could sell us experience, though at diamond prices, but then no one would use the article second-hand!

You may imitate, but never counterfeit.