French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
Men, born doubtless to be beautiful—for all creatures have a relative beauty—are enrolled from their childhood beneath the yoke of force, beneath the rule of the hammer, the chisel, the loom, and have been promptly vulcanized.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Man himself is not a finished creation; if he were, God would not Be.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
Moreover, all lovers have the art of arranging a special code of signals, whose arbitrary import it is difficult to understand. At a ball, a flower placed in some odd way in the hair; at the theatre, a pocket handkerchief unfolded on the front of the box; rubbing the nose, wearing a belt of a particular color, putting the hat on one side, wearing one dress oftener than another, singing a certain song in a concert or touching certain notes on the piano; fixing the eyes on a point agreed; everything, in fact, from the hurdy-gurdy which passes your windows and goes away if you open the shutter, to the newspaper announcement of a horse for sale—all may be reckoned as correspondence.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
If a man never grew old, I would never wish him to have a wife!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
There is no good fete without a morrow.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
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
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
Thought alone holds the tradition of the bygone life. The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source of human genius.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
To write a letter, and to have it posted; to get an answer, to read it and burn it; there we have correspondence stated in the simplest terms.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
It is very easy to accuse a young person for suffering herself to be deceived, in the desire to escape, at any price, from the condition of girlhood; but such an accusation is only just in the present condition of our manners. At the present day, a young person knows nothing about seduction and its snares, she relies altogether upon her weakness, and mingling with this reliance the convenient maxims of the fashionable world, she takes as her guide while under the control of those desires which everything conspires to excite, her own deluding fancies, which prove a guide all the more treacherous, because a young girl rarely ever confides to another the secret thoughts of her first love.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
Know this for certain—methods are always confounded with results; you will never succeed in separating the soul from the senses, spirit from matter.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
Tone is light in another shape. In music, instruments perform the functions of the colors employed in painting.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gambara
A woman's thought is endowed with incredible elasticity. When she receives a knockdown blow, she bends, seems crushed, and then renews her natural shape in a given time.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
In the matter of repartees literary celebrities are often not as quick as women.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Conviction brings a silent, indefinable beauty into faces made of the commonest human clay; the devout worshiper at any shrine reflects something of its golden glow, even as the glory of a noble love shines like a sort of light from a woman's face.
HONORE DE BALZAC
So thorough an old maid as Sylvie was certain to make good progress in the way of salvation.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Pierrette
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
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
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