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Men give way before the power of genius, they hate it and try to blow upon it because it takes without sharing the plunder, but they give way if it persists; in short, they worship it on their knees when they have failed in their efforts to bury it under the mud.

— Honoré de Balzac Père Goriot (1835)

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Intelligence

More quotes by Honoré de Balzac

Science is the language of the Temporal world, Love is that of the Spiritual world.

Séraphîta (1835)

The most real of all splendors are not in outward things, they are within us.

Séraphîta (1835)

Clouds signify the veil of the Most High.

Séraphîta (1835)

Tone is light in another shape. In music, instruments perform the functions of the colours employed in painting.

Gambara (1837)

All human power is a compound of time and patience.

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Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.

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Like every 'intellectual', a philosophy teacher is a petty bourgeois. When he opens his mouth, it is petty-bourgeois ideology that speaks: its resources and ruses are infinite.

Louis Althusser Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Honoré de Balzac (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.