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If we all said to people’s faces what we say behind one another’s backs, society would be impossible.

Honore de Balzac

Memories beautify life, but the capacity to forget makes it bearable.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Beautiful Capacity Forget Life Memories
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
Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Future Investment Man Old Own Past Sorrow
True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Equality Forever Love Pure True
The more one judges, the less one loves.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Judgement Love Oneself
One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Believe Immortal Marriage Oneself Soul
Like hunger, physical love is a necessity. But man’s appetite for amour is never so regular or so sustained as his appetite for the delights of the table.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Appetite Hungry Love Man Necessary Sex
Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Change Delight Happiness Instrument Position Woman
Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Lying Misery Misfortune Worst
Want him to be more of a man? Try being more of a woman!
HONORE DE BALZAC

Feature Himself Man Woman
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
He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Care Greatness Heart Man Mistake Tranquility
The press is like a woman: sublime when it lies, it will not let go until it has forced you to believe it. The public, like a foolish husband, always succumbs.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Believe Force Husband Let Go Lying Media Public Yourself
Gratitude is a fool’s word; we find it in the dictionary, but it is not in the heart of man.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Dictionary Fools Gratitude Heart Man World
In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Children Family Intimate Life Moments Parents Willing
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
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.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Equality Forever Heart Love Poor True Violence Young
Love is the poetry of the senses.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Love Poetry Sense
Give to a wounded heart seclusion; consolation nor reason ever effected anything in such a case.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Affect Case Heart Reason Wound
Old maids, having never bent their temper or their lives to other lives and other tempers, as woman’s destiny requires, have for the most part a mania for making everything about them bend to them.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Destiny Live Maid Old Requirement Woman
The good we do to others is spoilt unless we efface ourselves so completely that those we help have no sense of inferiority.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Complete Feeling Goodness Help Inferior
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
Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Alcohol End Greatness Love Start
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
When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Attack Fall People Religion Rich Royal
Everybody all over the world takes a wife’s estimate into account in forming an opinion of a man.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Account Estimate Form Man Opinion Wife World
It is as absurd to say that a man can’t love one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to play the same piece of music.
HONORE DE BALZAC

Instrument Love Man Music Musician Pieces Play Weird Woman

If we all said to people’s faces what we say behind one another’s backs, society would be impossible.

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If we all said to people’s faces what we say behind one another’s backs, society would be impossible.

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