Honore de Balzac Quotes

Long as I was riding in a big Cadillac and dressed nice and had plenty of food, that's all I cared about.

Once we are fed, heated, housed and healthy, our extra consumption inevitably has an element of luxury about it. And once luxury enters the scene, the practicalities are in trouble, as women who wear expensive stiletto heels can testify.

I'm a simple man. All I want is enough sleep for two normal men, enough whiskey for three, and enough women for four.

Luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksand, poverty or chains.

You can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown. Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who give themselves up to them. It is only luxuries and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult to obtain; unfortunately they are the only things that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary men.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

Luxury is an enticing pleasure, a bastard mirth, which hath honey in her mouth, gall in her heart, and a sting in her tail.

Living in the lap of luxury isn't bad except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up.

The love of Luxury grows by what it feeds upon.

I was a millionaire twice over and half again before I was twenty-one. I stole every nickel of it and blew the bulk of the bundle on fine threads, gourmet foods, luxurious lodgings, fantastic foxes, fine wheels, and other sensual goodies.

Luxury is a difficult object to describe - it's been the object of hundreds of years of discussion. We definitely don't need it, but it's good for the soul.

Give me the luxuries and I can dispense with the necessities.

It's a wonderful world when you have what you want at all times.

When you're not used to comfort and good things to eat, you're intoxicated by them in no time. Truth's only too pleased to leave you. Very little is ever needed for Truth to let go of you. And after all, you're not really very keen to keep hold of it.

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

People don't want to hear about me having leather walls or gold toilets.

For me, life is not about gold taps and marble all over the place.

Decadence is wonderful.

Fame introduced me to a world of instant gratification and decadence I hadn't seen before.

Worldly pleasures, such as flow from greatness, riches, honours, and sensual gratifications, are infinitely worse than none.

I am one of those for whom superfluity is a necessity.

I absolutely loathe luxury. It is the one thing I cannot stand.

I want to drink champagne from ladies' shoes.

I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence.

The Puritans were obsessed with the dangers of wealth.