“Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.”

— Honoré de Balzac, Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842), trans. R. S. Scott, Part II, ch. L

About Honoré de Balzac

1799 – 1850

French novelist, author of "La Comédie humaine".

“Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster which devours everything, that is, familiarity.”

“All human power is a compound of time and patience.”

“Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact.”

“Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”

“Grief may be joy misunderstood; Only the Good discerns the good.”

“Happiness is lost by criticizing it; sorrow by accepting it.”

“Every joy that some experience is paid for by the sorrow of others.”

“Death, like generation, is a secret of Nature.”

“No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle.”