HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES XIV

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

However portentous a fact may be, or even supernatural--if such facts exist--however solemnly a miracle may be done in sight of all, the lightning of that fact, the thunderbolt of that miracle is quickly swallowed up in the ocean of life, whose surface, scarcely stirred by the brief convulsion, returns to the level of its habitual flow.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: miracle


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: God


Clouds signify the veil of the Most High.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita


If a man never grew old, I would never wish him to have a wife!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


Hunger is not so violent as love; but the caprices of the soul are more numerous, more bewitching, more exquisite in their intensity than the caprices of gastronomy; but all that the poets and the experiences of our own life have revealed to us on the subject of love, arms us celibates with a terrible power: we are the lion of the Gospel seeking whom we may devour.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: life


There are husbands, tall and of superior intellect, whose wives have lovers who are ugly, short, or stupid.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: lovers


Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.

HONORE DE BALZAC

attributed, Words of Wisdom: Honore de Balzac

Tags: solitude


Do you know how a man makes his way here? By brilliant genius or by skilful corruption. You must either cut your way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them like a plague.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Père Goriot

Tags: genius


What a thing of fantasy a woman may become after dusk.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Ferragus

Tags: fantasy


A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.

HONORE DE BALZAC

A Woman of Thirty

Tags: women


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


Correspondence, in which the pen is always bolder than speech, and thought, wreathing itself with flowers, allows itself to be seen without disguise.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: flowers


If a man strike his mistress it is a self-inflicted wound; but if he strike his wife it is suicide!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: suicide


The progression of pleasures is from the distich to the quatrain, from the quatrain to the sonnet, from the sonnet to the ballad, from the ballad to the ode, from the ode to the cantata, from the cantata to the dithyramb. The husband who commences with dithyramb is a fool.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: fool


Thoughts of adultery do not take possession of the heart of a married woman all at once, like a shot from a pistol.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: adultery


Little minds need to practise despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great souls thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Pierrette

Tags: tyranny


To follow the impulse of love and feeling is the secret law of every woman's heart.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: law


It is very humiliating that no adorer has yet turned up for me. I am a marriageable girl, but I have brothers, a family, relations, who are sensitive on the point of honor. Ah! if that is what keeps men back, they are poltroons.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: family


Let the man whom I deign to love beware how he thinks of anything but loving me!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: love


Women will not suffer their idol to step down from his pedestal. They do not forgive the slightest pettiness in a god.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: God