HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES XII

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

A good mind protects like a divinity; disenchantment is as keen-sighted as a surgeon; experience as foreseeing as a mother. Those three qualities are the cardinal virtues of a safe marriage.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: experience


A country is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is interested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when composed of scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own plot of land, blind in their wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is coming when this too will be torn from them.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides


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


Vanity is only to be satisfied by gold in floods.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: gold


My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one."

HONORE DE BALZAC

The Lily of the Valley

Tags: women


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

HONORé DE BALZAC

attributed, And I Quote

Tags: marriage


Great artists are beings who, to quote Napoleon, can cut off at will the connection which Nature has put between the senses and thought.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: artists


A man loves with more or less passion according to the number of cords which his pretty mistress binds to his heart.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: passion


A long future requires a long past.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: future


True, I have my weak points; but were I a man, I should adore them. They arise from what is most promising in me.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides


The words fell as the axe of a skillful woodman falls at the root of a young tree and brings it down at a single blow.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: tree


The good man signed the papers with the innocence of a child who does what his mother orders without question.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: innocence


O headache, protectress of love, tariff of married life, buckler against which all married desires expire! O mighty headache! Can it be possible that lovers have never sung thy praises, personified thee, or raised thee to the skies? O magic headache, O delusive headache, blest be the brain that first invented thee! Shame on the doctor who shall find out thy preventive! Yes, thou art the only ill that women bless, doubtless through gratitude for the good things thou dispensest to them, O deceitful headache!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: art


Wit is thought to be a quality rare in comedians. It is so natural to suppose that persons who spend their lives in showing things on the outside have nothing within.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: quality


The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the physical presence.

HONORE DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: soul


In the provinces there is always a valve or a faucet through which gossip leaks from one social set to another.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Pierrette

Tags: gossip


How, alas! are we to explain, while respecting the honor of all the peoples, the problem which results from the fact that three millions of burning hearts can find no more than four hundred thousand women on which they can feed? Should we apportion four celibates for each woman and remember that the honest women would have already established, instinctively and unconsciously, a sort of understanding between themselves and the celibates, like that which the presidents of royal courts have initiated, in order to make their partisans in each chamber enter successively after a certain number of years?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: women


Well, monsieur ... a musician always finds it difficult to reply when the answer needs the cooperation of a hundred skilled executants. Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, without an orchestra would be of no great account.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: cooperation


Well, as for me, I admire literary people, but from a distance. I find them intolerable; in conversation they are despotic; I do not know what displeases me more, their faults or their good qualities. In short (he swallows his chestnut), people of genius are like tonics—you like, but you must use them temperately.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: conversation


We may note within ourselves many a long struggle the end of which is one of our own actions--struggles which are, as it were, the reverse side of humanity. This reverse side belongs to God; the obverse side to men.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: humanity