French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
To come so low as to beg servants to reveal secrets to you, and to fall lower still by paying for a revelation, is not a crime; it is perhaps not even a dastardly act, but it is certainly a piece of folly; for nothing will ever guarantee to you the honesty of a servant who betrays her mistress, and you can never feel certain whether she is operating in your interest or in that of your wife.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Madness that is so nearly allied to genius can know no cure in this world.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gambara
The married woman is a slave whom one must know how to set upon a throne.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
If you have desired your object only for one day, your love perhaps will not last more than three nights.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Unite a fine intelligence with a dwarfed intelligence and you precipitate a disaster; for it is necessary that equilibrium be preserved in everything.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
It is necessary for the full understanding of this history to explain how the natural discernment and spirit of analysis which old women bring to bear on the actions of others gave power to Mademoiselle Gamard, and what were the resources on her side. Accompanied by the taciturn Abbe Troubert she made a round of evening visits to five or six houses, at each of which she met a circle of a dozen or more persons, united by kindred tastes and the same general situation in life. Among them were one or two men who were influenced by the gossip and prejudices of their servants; five or six old maids who spent their time in sifting the words and scrutinizing the actions of their neighbours and others in the class below them; besides these, there were several old women who busied themselves in retailing scandal, keeping an exact account of each person’s fortune, striving to control or influence the actions of others, prognosticating marriages, and blaming the conduct of friends as sharply as that of enemies. These persons, spread about the town like the capillary fibres of a plant, sucked in, with the thirst of a leaf for the dew, the news and the secrets of each household, and transmitted them mechanically to the Abbe Troubert, as the leaves convey to the branch the moisture they absorb.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
In bringing God face to face with the Great Whole, we see that only two states are possible between them,—either God and Matter are contemporaneous, or God existed alone before Matter. Were Reason—the light that has guided the human race from the dawn of its existence—accumulated in one brain, even that mighty brain could not invent a third mode of being without suppressing both Matter and God.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
Where poverty ceases, avarice begins.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Lost Illusions
It is as absurd to deny that it is possible for a man always to love the same woman, as it would be to affirm that some famous musician needed several violins in order to execute a piece of music or compose a charming melody.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
To call a desire into being, to nourish it, to develop it, to bring it to full growth, to excite it, to satisfy it, is a complete poem of itself.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
God makes no mistake in His judgments, Madame; I recognize no tribunal but His.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
When a woman has no friend of her own sex intimate enough to assist her in proving false to marital love, her maid is a last resource which seldom fails in bringing about the desired result.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Now, if a knowledge of mathematical laws gave us these four great musicians, what may we not attain to if we can discover the physical laws in virtue of which—grasp this clearly—we may collect, in larger or smaller quantities, according to the proportions we may require, an ethereal substance diffused in the atmosphere which is the medium alike of music and of light, of the phenomena of vegetation and of animal life! Do you follow me? Those new laws would arm the composer with new powers by supplying him with instruments superior of those now in use, and perhaps with a potency of harmony immense as compared with that now at his command. If every modified shade of sound answers to a force, that must be known to enable us to combine all these forces in accordance with their true laws.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gambara
Men may weary by their constancy, but women never.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Love, as I conceive it, is a purely subjective poem. In all that books tell us about it, there is nothing which is not at once false and true.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
We will not attempt to enumerate the women who are virtuous from stupidity, for it is acknowledged that in love all women have intellect.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Your Science, which makes you great in your own eyes, is paltry indeed beside the light which bathes a Seer.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
It is extremely rare for young men, when driven to suicide, to attempt it a second time if the first fails. When it doesn't cure life, it cures all desire for voluntary death.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot