Honore de Balzac Quotes

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

Virtue alone has majesty in death.

Hypocrisy is not a way of getting back to the moral high ground. Pretending you're moral, saying your moral is not the same as acting morally.

Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature and moderation and reason.

I believe that ideal character in its perfection is potentially in every man who is born into the world.

I consider nothing low but ignorance, vice, and meanness, characteristics generally found where the animal propensities predominate over the higher sentiments.

The secret value of a conscience, that approves its own action, is lessened somewhat each time that it receives the reward of fame by displaying its deeds.

Men of most renowned virtue have by transgressing most truly kept the law.

Virtuous people are simply those who have not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them.

Fidelity to conscience is inconsistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, let the modesty succumb. It can be only a false modesty which can be thus endangered.

Virtue must be valuable, if men and women of all degrees pretend to have it.

Nothing in our times has become so unattractive as virtue.

My pet peeve and my goal in life is to somehow get an adjective for 'integrity' in the dictionary. 'Truthful' doesn't really cover it, or 'genuine.' It should be like 'integritus.'

Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.

It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

To do nothing evil is good; to wish nothing evil is better.

One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real.

It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.

The just man walks in his integrity