# A Woman of Thirty

- Author: [Honoré de Balzac](https://www.leafyquotes.com/honore-de-balzac.md)
- Quotes: 9
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/honore-de-balzac/a-woman-of-thirty

## Quotes

> The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/honore-de-balzac/a-woman-of-thirty/the-sanctity-of-womanhood.md)

> But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/honore-de-balzac/a-woman-of-thirty/but-reason-always.md)

> A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
>
> And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations — trouble and storm in the love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl's love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can only make moan.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/honore-de-balzac/a-woman-of-thirty/a-girls-coquetry.md)

> What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/honore-de-balzac/a-woman-of-thirty/what-is-a-child.md)

> Nothing is so discreet as a young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface smoothness, and the freshness of a lake. There is no character in women’s faces before the age of thirty.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/honore-de-balzac/a-woman-of-thirty/nothing-is-so-discreet.md)

> Girls are apt to imagine noble and enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections for their daydreams, and put their trust in him.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/honore-de-balzac/a-woman-of-thirty/girls-are-apt.md)

> Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/honore-de-balzac/a-woman-of-thirty/women-are-tenacious.md)

> Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/honore-de-balzac/a-woman-of-thirty/love-has-its.md)

> Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/honore-de-balzac/a-woman-of-thirty/many-men-are.md)