Mais la raison est toujours mesquine auprès du sentiment ; l'une est naturellement bornée, comme tout ce qui est positif, et l'autre est infini." - Meaning and context.">
But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.
 • Ch. III: At Thirty Years
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Mais la raison est toujours mesquine auprès du sentiment ; l'une est naturellement bornée, comme tout ce qui est positif, et l'autre est infini.

— Honoré de Balzac

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Mais la raison est toujours mesquine auprès du sentiment ; l'une est naturellement bornée, comme tout ce qui est positif, et l'autre est infini." in the context of "But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.
 • Ch. III: At Thirty Years" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Honoré de Balzac" (Quotes, A Woman of Thirty (1842)) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Honoré de Balzac

About Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac (20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist. Along with Flaubert, he is generally regarded as a founding father of realism in European literature.