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Quote by Honore de Balzac

“Reproach is usually honest, which is more than can be said of praise.”

Quote by Honore de Balzac

Author

Honore de Balzac

French novelist born on May 20, 1799, and died on August 18, 1850. Honore de Balzac is renowned for his profound insight and criticism of 19th-century French society, hailed as the 'father of modern fiction'. more

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“When she lives at his palace, the maiden niece of a bishop can pass for a respectable woman because, if she has a love affair, she is obliged to hoodwink her uncle.”

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“The world will avenge itself upon all happiness in which it has no share.”

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“Emulation is not rivalry. Emulation is the child of ambition; rivalry is the unlovable daughter of envy.”

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“No woman has ever existed who did not know perfectly well in her heart what to expect from the superiority or inferiority of a rival.”

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“Old maids claw as cats do. They not only inflict wounds but experience pleasure in doing so. Nor will they fail to remind their victims of the blood drawn.”

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“Your modest savant smiles as he says to his admirers: What have I done? Nothing. Man does not invent a force, he directs it.”

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“With every one, the expectation of a misfortune constitutes a dreadful, punishment. Suffering then assumes the proportions of the unknown, which is the soul's infinite.”

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“One day, about the middle of July 1838, one of the carriages, lately introduced to Paris cabstands, and known as Milords, was driving down the Rue de l'Universite, conveying a stout man of middle height in the uniform of a captain of the National Guard.”

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Book:Cousin Betty

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“There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose half-monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at the sound of an unaccustomed step.”

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“Charity is not one of the virtues practiced on the stock market. The heart of a bank is but one of many viscera.”

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Author:Honore de Balzac