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As a rule, only the poor are generous.

Honore de Balzac

If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know merely the outward events of a man’s life would only serve to make a chronological table-a fool’s notion of history.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Feeling Fools History Judgement Life Man Secret Sorrow
The man who enters his wife’s dressing room is either a philosopher or a fool.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Fools Himself Man Philosophy Wife
How natural it is to destroy what we cannot possess, to deny what we do not understand, and to insult what we envy!
HONORE DE BALZAC

Destroy Insult Jealous Natural Possession
Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Courtesy General Selfish
Law is a silvery web that lets the big flies pass and catches all the small ones.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Catch Law Oneself Pass Small
The more you judge, the less you love.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Judge Love Yourself
Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Death Expectation Man True
It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Difficult Easy Husband Love Simplicity Talk Time
Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Food Hate Small Soul Vice
Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Need Solitude Yourself
Women, when they have made a sheep of a man, always tell him that he is a lion with a will of iron.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Man Sheep Strength Willing Woman
The greater a man’s talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Close Greatness Mad Man Mark Original Talent
Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Hard Power Reveal Strike True
An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man’s entire existence.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Drain Existence Fulfillment Vocation
Though the human heart may have to pause for rest when climbing the heights of affection it rarely stops on the slippery slope of hatred.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Affection Hate Heart Human Rare Slope
People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Fortune Happiness Misfortune Ourselves People

As a rule, only the poor are generous.

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As a rule, only the poor are generous.

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