HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES IX

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

Seen from a distance, Raoul Nathan was a very fine meteor. Fashion accepted his ways and his appearance. His borrowed republicanism gave him, for the time being, that Jansenist harshness assumed by the defenders of the popular cause, while they inwardly scoff at it--a quality not without charm in the eyes of women.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: appearance


Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides


It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Père Goriot


What is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood?

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: mothers


His life flowed soundless as the sands of an hour-glass.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: life


She worshiped her children. They were so young that she could hide the disorders of her life from their eyes, and could win their love.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: children


As I took my leave of her, I caught a gleam of hate and rage in her eyes that made me shudder. We parted enemies. She would fain have crushed me out of existence; and for my own part, I felt pity for her, and for some natures pity is the deadliest of insults.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: pity


Thieves, spies, lovers, diplomats, and slaves of any kind alone know the resources and comforts of a glance. They alone know what it contains of meaning, sweetness, thought, anger, villainy, displayed by the modification of that ray of light which conveys the soul.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: anger


Nature has favored our sex in giving us a choice between love and motherhood. I have made mine. My children shall be my gods, and this spot of earth my Eldorado.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: children


It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides


Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: virtue


Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.

HONORé DE BALZAC

attributed, And I Quote

Tags: marriage


A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected at least one woman.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: marriage


Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.

HONORE DE BALZAC

attributed, Words of Wisdom: Honore de Balzac

Tags: solitude


There are husbands, tall and of superior intellect, whose wives have lovers who are ugly, short, or stupid.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: lovers


Physical love is a craving like hunger, excepting that man eats all the time, and in love his appetite is neither so persistent nor so regular as at the table. A piece of bread and a carafe of water will satisfy the hunger of any man; but our civilization has brought to light the science of gastronomy. Love has its piece of bread, but it has also its science of loving, that science which we call coquetry, a delightful word which the French alone possess, for that science originated in this country.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: science


The caresses over which love presides are always pure.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


To sum up, the world is mine without effort of mine, and the world has not the slightest hold on me.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: effort


Your young wife will never take a lover, as we have elsewhere said, without making serious reflections. As soon as the honeymoon wanes, you will find that you have aroused in her a sentiment of pleasure which you have not satisfied; you have opened to her the book of life; and she has derived an excellent idea from the prosaic dullness which distinguishes your complacent love, of the poetry which is the natural result when souls and pleasures are in accord. Like a timid bird, just startled by the report of a gun which has ceased, she puts her head out of her nest, looks round her, and sees the world; and knowing the word of a charade which you have played, she feels instinctively the void which exists in your languishing passion. She divines that it is only with a lover that she can regain the delightful exercise of her free will in love. You have dried the green wood in preparation for a fire.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


It is so natural, socially speaking, to laugh at the failings of others that we ought to forgive the ridicule our own absurdities excite, and be annoyed only by calumny.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours