HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES X

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

For want of exercising in nature’s own way the activity bestowed upon women, and yet impelled to spend it in some way or other, Mademoiselle Gamard had acquired the habit of using it in petty intrigues, provincial cabals, and those self-seeking schemes which occupy, sooner or later, the lives of all old maids.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: habit


Civilization is come. It has shut up a million of men within an area of four square leagues; it has stalled them in streets, houses, apartments, rooms, and chambers eight feet square; after a time it will make them shut up one upon another like the tubes of a telescope.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: Men


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


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

HONORE DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: marriage


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


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

La Duchesse de Langeais

Tags: equality


The caresses over which love presides are always pure.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


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


Women understand better than we do the art of analyzing the two human feelings, which alternately form their weapons of attack, or the weapons of which they are victims. They have the instinct of love, because it is their whole life, and of jealousy, because it is almost the only means by which they can control us.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: art


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


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


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: love


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


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

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: joy


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: nature


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: gold


Vice and disappointment and vindictiveness are the best of all detectives.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: disappointment


A long future requires a long past.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: future


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