Honore de Balzac Quotes

I know divers, and divers men know me, which love me as I do them: yet if I should pray them, when I meet them in the street openly, they would abhor me; but if I pray them where they be appointed to meet me secretly, they will hear me and accept my request.

Sometimes I hid my family connections.

When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.

High rank and soft manners may not always belong to a true heart.

Chinese culture in general is not very religious. Confucianism is more a code of ethics than a religion, and ancestor worship is a way for parents to control you even after they're dead.

If I've learned one thing, it's 'don't tell the truth.' Lies keep you together.

I certainly never get above my station - my family would soon slap me back down to earth.

All is extremely genteel; and there is almost as much repose as in the golden saloons of the contiguous palaces. At any rate, if there be as much vice, there is as little crime.

I got a family I got to answer to. I got kids... my older parents and my preachers and everybody.

There are no words which men detest more than "solitary," "desolate," and "hapless." Yet Lords and Princes use them to describe themselves.

There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.

There are secrets in families. That is the definition of a family.

The things that are considered to be respectable have their roots in unrespectable things.

My mother wanted my sister and me to live a normal life. I always picked friends who weren't impressed with my family ties.

How many threadbare souls are to be found under silken cloaks and gowns!

To establish oneself in the world, one does all one can to seem established there already.

I. At Tea THE kettle descants in a cosy drone, And the young wife looks in her husband's face, And then in her guest's, and shows in her own Her sense that she fills an envied place; And the visiting lady is all abloom, And says there was never so sweet a room. And the happy young housewife does not know That the woman beside her was his first choice, Till the fates ordained it could not be so.... Betraying nothing in look or voice The guest sits smiling and sips her tea, And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.

Everyone pretends to be normal and be your best friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you don't know about, and if only we had a camera on us at all times, we could go and watch each other's tapes and find out what each of us was really like.

Everyone has something to hide. And if they couldn't hide it the world would be in a lot worse mess than it is.

You can smile when your heart is breaking because you are a woman, and a courtier, and a Howard. That's three reasons for being the most deceitful creature on God's earth.

...hoarders of guilty secrets are inevitably consumed with appearances.

An American who can make money, invoke God, and be no better than his neighbor, has nothing to fear but truth itself.

Men chase by night those they will not greet by day.

It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man.

I'm super-popular, so I had to pretend to be a loser, which was super-hard.