HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES XVII

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

Though the comforts which all creatures desire, and for which he had so often longed, thus fell to his share, the Abbe Birotteau, like the rest of the world, found it difficult, even for a priest, to live without something to hanker for.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: desire


Now it is impossible for a woman who is perpetually at war with herself and living in contradiction to her true life, to leave others in peace or refrain from envying their happiness.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: happiness


Passions are as mean as they are cruel.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve


All human power is a compound of time and patience.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Eugénie Grandet

Tags: power


A woman's life begins with her first passion.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: life


Raise those great black eyes of yours, fixed on my opening sentence, and keep this excitement for the letter which shall tell you of my first love. By the way, why always "first?" Is there, I wonder, a second love?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: love


A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: life


Certain women of a lymphatic temperament will pretend to have the spleen and will even feign death, if they can only gain thereby the benefit of a secret divorce.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: death


When a woman utters the name of a man but twice a day, there is perhaps some uncertainty about her feelings toward him—but if thrice?—Oh! oh!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


The virtue of women is perhaps a question of temperament.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: question


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


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


Happiness in marriage results in perfect union of soul between a married pair. Hence it follows that in order to be happy a man must feel himself bound by certain rules of honor and delicacy. After having enjoyed the benefit of the social law which consecrates the natural craving, he must obey also the secret laws of nature by which sentiments unfold themselves. If he stakes his happiness on being himself loved, he must himself love sincerely: nothing can resist a genuine passion.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: happiness


If love is a child, passion is a man.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


Therefore Prayer, issuing from so many trials, is the consummation of all truths, all powers, all feelings.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: prayer


She who is really a wife, one in heart, flesh, and bone, must follow wherever he leads, in whom her life, her strength, her pride, and happiness are centered.

HONORE DE BALZAC

The Magic Skin

Tags: marriage


The eyes of the good vicar never reached the optical range which enables men of the world to see and evade their neighbors' rough points. Before he could be brought to perceive the faults of his landlady he was forced to undergo the warning which Nature gives to all her creatures--pain.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: faults


I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letter to Zulma Carraud, July 2, 1832

Tags: writing


Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.

HONORE DE BALZAC

A Woman of Thirty

Tags: love


Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.

HONORE DE BALZAC

attributed, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources

Tags: misfortune