French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
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
In Paris no sentiment can withstand the drift of things, and their current compels a struggle in which the passions are relaxed: there love is a desire, and hatred a whim; there’s no true kinsman but the thousand-franc note, no better friend than the pawnbroker.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
By remaining unmarried, a creature of the female sex becomes void of meaning; selfish and cold, she creates repulsion.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
Well, gold contains all things in embryo; gold realizes all things for us.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
A husband and wife found themselves in love with each other for the first time after twenty-seven years of marriage.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
What is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood?
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected at least one woman.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.
HONORé DE BALZAC
attributed, And I Quote
What an admirable maneuver it would be to make a wife dance, and to feed her on vegetables!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
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
His life flowed soundless as the sands of an hour-glass.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
The married woman who is the most chaste may be also the most voluptuous.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Man is the minister of Nature, and society engrafts itself upon her.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
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
Wisdom is the understanding of celestial things to which the Spirit is brought by Love.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
A man may be put to death by a thought.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Time is their tyrant: it fails them, it escapes them; they can neither expand it nor cut it short.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
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
The Italian school has lost sight of the high mission of art. Instead of elevating the crowd, it has condescended to the crowd; it has won its success only by accepting the suffrages of all comers, and appealing to the vulgar minds which constitute the majority. Such a success is mere street juggling.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gambara