Honore de Balzac Quotes

To man, faith; to woman, doubt. She bears the heavier burden. Does not woman invariably suffer for two?

Women serve but to keep a man from better company.

If it's so painful to love and absorb electricity, how much more painful it is to be a woman, to be the electricity, to inspire love.

Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.

Whatever the theories may be of woman's dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he can not bear her burdens.

There is no doubt that sorrow brings one down in the world. The aristocratic privilege of silence belongs, you soon find out, to only the happy state- or, at least, to the state when pain keeps within bounds.

We have a double standard, which is to say, a man can show how much he cares by being violent-see, he's jealous, he cares-a woman shows how much she cares by how much she's willing to be hurt; by how much she will take; how much she will endure; how suicidal she's prepared to be.

Sometimes I feel... that my cross is heavy beyond endurance... My heart seems worn out and bruised beyond repair, and in my deep loneliness I often wish to be gone, but God knows best, and I want to do every ounce of work He wants me to do.

I bear a little more than I can bear.

Marriage exists as an institution of exploitation, it is not togetherness. That is why no happiness comes out of it as a flowering. It cannot. Out of the roots of exploitation how can ecstasy be born?

I know a lot about women and their suffering, but I still know almost nothing about men.

The dull pain of truth weights my soul, pulling it under. I am left hopelessly awake.

Dantes passed through all the stages of torture natural to prisoners in suspense. He was sustained at first by that pride of conscious innocence which is the sequence to hope; then he began to doubt his own innocence, which justified in some measure the governor's belief in his mental alienation; and then, relaxing his sentiment of pride, he addressed his supplications, not to God, but to man. God is always the last resource. Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance.

the trouble with a woman standing behind her man is that she can't see where she is going!

In pain, I'd rather walk with Jesus with all of my questions, than walk by myself with all the answers.

I think there does need to be give and take on both sides, and this idea that sex is kind of a woman’s right to absolutely withhold, just as the idea that sex is a man’s right to demand I think they are both they both need to be moderated, so to speak.

When one is past, another care we have; Thus woe succeeds a woe, as wave a wave.

The question, 'How can you believe in a God who permits suffering on this scale?' is therefore very much around at the moment, and it would be surprising if it weren't - indeed it would be wrong if it weren't.

I do not doubt that it would be easier for fate to take away your suffering than it would for me. But you will see for yourself that much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.

I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes most people unhappy. If you only knew it, you are in luck not to have a heart.

We have entered 'The Era of the Three-Option Woman and the No-Option Man.'

I feel like the feminine has been a little undervalued. We all have to get our own jobs and make our own money, but staying at home, nurturing, being the mother, cooking — it's a valuable thing my mom created. And sometimes, you need your knight in shining armor. I'm sorry. You need a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman. That's why relationships work.

How quickly a person in pain whom you can't help becomes a reproach. And then, no doubt, a thorn.

Paneloux is a man of learning, a scholar. He hasn't come in contact with death; that's why he can speak with such assurance of the truth-with a capital T. But every country priest who visits his parishioners and has heard a man gasping for breath on his deathbed thinks as I do. He'd try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its goodness.