Skip to content

To be able to keep a mother-in-law in the country while he lives in Paris, and vice versa, is a piece of good fortune which a husband too rarely meets with.

— Honoré de Balzac Physiology of Marriage (1829)

Avoir sa belle-mère en province quand on demeure à Paris, et vice versa, est une de ces bonnes fortunes qui se rencontrent toujours trop rarement.

Original text (French)

Another quote →

Notes from Wikiquote

Part III, Meditation XXV: Allies, Section II: Of the Mother-in-Law

Topics

Luck

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.

All Honoré de Balzac quotes →

You may also like

In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.

Louis Pasteur

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night (1601)

O Fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers,
Why make such game of this poor life of ours?

Horace Satires (-35)

Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776)

Attribution

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.