The Human Comedy Quotes

“Man cannot spend all his time doing evil, and even in the company of pirates there must be some sweet moments on their sinister ship when you feel as if you were aboard a pleasure yacht.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“There's nothing so fearsome as the revolt of a sheep," said de Marsay.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“I had youth, beauty, two advantages conferred by chance, and of which we are as proud as if they were hard-won.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“No one was irritable; we have never known anyone to remain unhappy while digesting a good meal. We enjoy lingering in a becalmed state, a kind of midpoint between the reverie of a thinker and the contentment of a cud-chewing animal, a state that should be termed the physical melancholy of gastronomy.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“Nonetheless, like all truly strong people, his speech was soft, his manners simple, and he was naturally kind.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“I left, stifling my generous impulse, for I have often observed that while a charitable act may do no harm to the benefactor, it is death to the one who receives it.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“Today, when everything is intellectual competition, a man must be capable of sitting in his chair at a desk for forty-eight hours straight just as a general had to sit for two days in his saddle on horseback.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“Doing his utmost, deploying all his energy, a young man setting out from zero can wind up after ten years somewhere below where he started.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“The rout, that dreary review of fashionable fineries, that parade of well-dressed self-infatuations, is one of those English inventions currently mechanifying the other nations. England seems determined to see the entire world bored just as she is, and just as bored as she.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“Manner is everything,” an elegant translation of that judicial axiom: “Form over content.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“But in life there is only one love. So all discussions of feelings, written or oral, can be summed up by these two questions: Is it a passion? Is it love?”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“And what is power without recognition? Nothing.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“escutcheon”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“The head has its designated place in all creations. If by chance a nation allows its head to fall at its feet, sooner or later it is sure to discover that it has committed suicide.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“France is the only country where some small phrase could bring about a great revolution.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“Equality may be a right, but no power on earth is capable of converting it into a fact.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“Today, talent needs the kind of luck that favors the incompetent; in fact, if a skilled man rejects the vile arrangements that bring success to rampant mediocrity, he will never get on at all.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“You will find the signs of good taste all around you; luxury is her constant companion, replaced as necessary”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“Does a creature of fashion not need a fine mind?” asked the Polish count. “More than anything else, she must have very fine taste,” answered Madame d’Espard.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“Once every woman was a living gazette, a font of delicious slanders cast in beautiful language.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“Once a thing is nothing more than what it is, it’s too useful to serve the cause of luxury.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories