HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES XIII

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC
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Letters of Two Brides


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Tags: love


For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Les Célibataires

Tags: passion


To seize adroitly upon the varieties of pleasure, to develop them, to impart to them a new style, an original expression, constitutes the genius of a husband.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: genius


The woman who allows herself to be found out deserves her fate.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: fate


In effect, the youth of Paris resemble the youth of no other town. They may be divided into two classes: the young man who has something, and the young man who has nothing; or the young man who thinks and he who spends. But, be it well understood this applies only to those natives of the soil who maintain in Paris the delicious course of the elegant life. There exist, as well, plenty of other young men, but they are children who are late in conceiving Parisian life, and who remain its dupes. They do not speculate, they study; they fag, as the others say. Finally there are to be found, besides, certain young people, rich or poor, who embrace careers and follow them with a single heart; they are somewhat like the Emile of Rousseau, of the flesh of citizens, and they never appear in society. The diplomatic impolitely dub them fools. Be they that or no, they augment the number of those mediocrities beneath the yoke of which France is bowed down. They are always there, always ready to bungle public or private concerns with the dull trowel of their mediocrity, bragging of their impotence, which they count for conduct and integrity. This sort of social prizemen infests the administration, the army, the magistracy, the chambers, the courts. They diminish and level down the country and constitute, in some manner, in the body politic, a lymph which infects it and renders it flabby. These honest folk call men of talent immoral or rogues. If such rogues require to be paid for their services, at least their services are there; whereas the other sort do harm and are respected by the mob; but, happily for France, elegant youth stigmatizes them ceaselessly under the name of louts.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Girl with the Golden Eyes

Tags: youth


Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: joy


A woman's life begins with her first passion.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: life


A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: words


When two human beings are united by pleasure, all social conventionalities are put aside. This situation conceals a reef on which many vessels are wrecked. A husband is lost, if he once forgets there is a modesty which is quite independent of coverings. Conjugal love ought never either to put on or to take away the bandage of its eyes, excepting at the due season.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


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

Tags: children


Science is the language of the Temporal world, Love is that of the Spiritual world.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: language


Is not the fraction which you know, in relation to their totality, what a single number is to infinity?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita


I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letter to Zulma Carraud, July 2, 1832

Tags: writing


Great artists are beings who, to quote Napoleon, can cut off at will the connection which Nature has put between the senses and thought.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: artists


You, you sybarites, canting bigots, vagabonds, hypocrites, sneaks, cudgellers, bucks, pilgrims, and such like, who are disguised as masqueraders to cheat the world! .... to heel, hounds; get out of the way! Away, pudden-heads! What, are you still there, in the devil's name?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


What woman wants pity?... A man's sternness is to us our only pardon.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: pity


She is dying, like a flower wilted by the burning sun.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: sun


In the matter of repartees literary celebrities are often not as quick as women.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: women


In the dark recesses of a porter’s lodge, beneath the tiles of an attic roof, many a poor girl dreams, on returning from the theatre, of pearls and diamonds, gold-embroidered gowns and sumptuous girdles; she fancies herself adored, applauded, courted; but little she knows of that treadmill life, in which the actress is forced to rehearsals under pain of fines, to the reading of new pieces, to the constant study of new roles.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: diamonds


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

Tags: desire