HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES X

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

In Paris no sentiment can withstand the drift of things, and their current compels a struggle in which the passions are relaxed: there love is a desire, and hatred a whim; there’s no true kinsman but the thousand-franc note, no better friend than the pawnbroker.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Girl with the Golden Eyes

Tags: desire


In the dark recesses of a porter’s lodge, beneath the tiles of an attic roof, many a poor girl dreams, on returning from the theatre, of pearls and diamonds, gold-embroidered gowns and sumptuous girdles; she fancies herself adored, applauded, courted; but little she knows of that treadmill life, in which the actress is forced to rehearsals under pain of fines, to the reading of new pieces, to the constant study of new roles.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: diamonds


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

HONORé DE BALZAC

attributed, And I Quote

Tags: marriage


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


The paternity of M. de Marsay was naturally most incomplete. In the natural order, it is but for a few fleeting instants that children have a father, and M. de Marsay imitated nature.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Girl with the Golden Eyes

Tags: children


Tyranny produces two results, exactly opposite in character, and which are symbolized in those two great types of the slave in classical times -- Epictetus and Spartacus. The one is hatred with its evil train, the other meekness with its Christian graces.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: character


Well, gold contains all things in embryo; gold realizes all things for us.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: gold


What is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood?

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: mothers


Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: joy


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: life


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


Man is the minister of Nature, and society engrafts itself upon her.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: nature


The married woman who is the most chaste may be also the most voluptuous.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


What an admirable maneuver it would be to make a wife dance, and to feed her on vegetables!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: dance


Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Père Goriot

Tags: women


A man may be put to death by a thought.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: death


Love consists almost always in conversation. There are few things inexhaustible in a lover: goodness, gracefulness and delicacy. To feel everything, to divine everything, to anticipate everything; to reproach without bringing affliction upon a tender heart; to make a present without pride; to double the value of a certain action by the way in which it is done; to flatter rather by actions than by words; to make oneself understood rather than to produce a vivid impression; to touch without striking; to make a look and the sound of the voice produce the effect of a caress; never to produce embarrassment; to amuse without offending good taste; always to touch the heart; to speak to the soul—this is all that women ask. They will abandon all the delights of all the nights of Messalina, if only they may live with a being who will yield them those caresses of the soul, for which they are so eager, and which cost nothing to men if only they have a little consideration.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: action


Time is their tyrant: it fails them, it escapes them; they can neither expand it nor cut it short.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Girl with the Golden Eyes


Wisdom is the understanding of celestial things to which the Spirit is brought by Love.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: love


Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

La Duchesse de Langeais

Tags: equality