Honore de Balzac Quotes

Faith is an island in the setting sun, But proof is the bottom line for everyone.

There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.

The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.

Facts are counterrevolutionary.

The facts are on our side.

We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.

Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.

Convictions do not imply reasons.

Without facts you can't have truth.

GIVE ME YOUR REASON TO BELIeVE

It is certain because it is impossible. -Certum est quia impossibile

When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.

To be realistic, you have to believe in miracles.

I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there's no way, to say it all. Saying it all is literally impossible: words fail. Yet it's through this very impossibility that the truth holds onto the real.

Even facts become fictions without adequate ways of seeing "the facts". We do not need theories so much as the experience that is the source of the theory. We are not satisfied with faith, in the sense of an implausible hypothesis irrationally held: we demand to experience the "evidence".

To understand possible means to understand impossible.

Paradoxes are the only truths.

Two truths cannot contradict one another.

Assumptions are dangerous things. I like facts a lot better.

You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.” “A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.” “You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right.

The Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed because it is absurd. And he was buried and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible.

All necessary truth is its own evidence.

Man believes in the possible, but God believes in the impossible.

We have a right to believe whatever we want, but not everything we believe is right.

Here's something that intrigues me: If you have faith, you believe regardless of the evidence, yet if there's ever evidence to support faith, everyone goes to it and points to it.