HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES XIX

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

Music, like painting, makes use of materials which have the property of liberating this or that property from the surrounding medium and so suggesting an image. The instruments in music perform this part, as color does in painting. And whereas each sound produced by a sonorous body is invariably allied with its major third and fifth, whereas it acts on grains of fine sand lying on stretched parchment so as to distribute them in geometrical figures that are always the same, according to the pitch,—quite regular when the combination is a true chord, and indefinite when the sounds are dissonant,—I say that music is an art conceived in the very bowels of nature.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: music


Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: courtesy


I have already seen hundreds of men, young and middle-aged; not one has stirred the least feeling in me. No proof of admiration and devotion on their part, not even a sword drawn in my behalf, would have moved me. Love, dear, is the product of such rare conditions that it is quite possible to live a lifetime without coming across the being on whom nature has bestowed the power of making one's happiness. The thought is enough to make one shudder; for if this being is found too late, what then?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: admiration


People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Modeste Mignon

Tags: happiness


If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Père Goriot


A lover has all the good points and all the bad points which are lacking in a husband.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


Love is the most melodious of all harmonies.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


If many man fail to be masters in their own house this is not from lack of willingness, but of talent. As for those who are ready to undergo the toils of this terrible duel, it is quite true that they must needs possess great moral force.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: talent


Squeeze marriage as much as you like, you will never extract anything from it but fun for bachelors and boredom for husbands.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: boredom


There are, without counting grocers and drapers, so many people who, to kill time, occupy themselves in seeking for the hidden motives which direct women's actions, that it is a work of charity to classify by titles and in chapters all the private circumstances of marriage; a good index will enable them to put their finger on the motions of their wives' hearts, just as logarithmic tables give them the product of any two numbers.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: charity


Then, let every one question his conscience on this point, and search his memory if he has ever met a man who confined himself to the love of one woman only!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: conscience


A married woman, then, in France presents the spectacle of a queen out at service, of a slave, at once free and a prisoner.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: France


Man himself is not a finished creation; if he were, God would not Be.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: God


Thought alone holds the tradition of the bygone life. The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source of human genius.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: genius


Tone is light in another shape. In music, instruments perform the functions of the colors employed in painting.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: light


A woman's life begins with her first passion.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: life


Here, the hearers receiving a musical impression do not work it out in themselves, as religion bids us work out the texts of Scripture in prayer. Hence it is very difficult to make them understand that there is in nature an eternal melody, exquisitely sweet, a perfect harmony, disturbed only by revolutions independent of the divine will, as passions are uncontrolled by the will of men.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: work


One of the most important rules of the science of manners is an almost absolute silence in regard to yourself.

HONORE DE BALZAC

La Comédie Humaine

Tags: manners


Your wife ought to drink water, lightly tinged with a Burgundy wine agreeable to her taste, but destitute of any tonic properties; every other kind of wine would be bad for her. Never allow her to drink water alone; if you do, you are lost...

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: wine


There are those whose character is like a chestnut without a kernel.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: character