HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES IV

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

We stand between two policies—either to found the State on the basis of the family, or to rest it on individual interest—in other words, between democracy and aristocracy, between free discussion and obedience, between Catholicism and religious indifference. I am among the few who are resolved to oppose what is called the people, and that in the people's true interest. It is not now a question of feudal rights, as fools are told, nor of rank; it is a question of the State and of the existence of France. The country which does not rest on the foundation of paternal authority cannot be stable. That is the foot of the ladder of responsibility and subordination, which has for its summit the King.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: question


Canst thou comprehend, my poor beloved Tried-one, that unless the torpor and the veils of sleep had wrapped thee, such sights would rend and bear away thy mind as the whirlwinds rend and carry into space the feeble sails, depriving thee forever of thy reason? Dost thou understand that the Soul itself, raised to its utmost power can scarcely endure in dreams the burning communications of the Spirit?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: dreams


Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: women


Up to the age of thirty the face of a woman is a book written in a foreign tongue, which one may still translate in spite of all the feminisms of the idiom; but on passing her fortieth year a woman becomes an insoluble riddle; and if any one can see through an old woman, it is another old woman.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: age


It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things from time to time.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: marriage


When a young woman suddenly takes up religious practices which she has before abandoned, this new order of life always conceals a motive highly significant, in view of her husband’s happiness. In the case of at least seventy-nine women out of a hundred this return to God proves that they have been inconsistent, or that they intend to become so.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: God


When there is an old maid in a house, watch-dogs are unnecessary; not the slightest event can occur that she does not see and comment upon and pursue to its utmost consequences.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Pierrette

Tags: dogs


We must all agree that legality would be a fine thing for social scoundrelism IF THERE WERE NO GOD.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Pierrette

Tags: God


The more one judges, the less one loves.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


The husband who leaves nothing to desire is a lost man.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: desire


The bed is the whole of marriage.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: marriage


Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: evil


Harmony reigns supreme, instead of being the foundation from which the melodic groups of the musical picture stand forth. These discordant combinations, far from moving the listener, arouse in him a feeling analogous to that which he would experience on seeing a rope-dancer hanging to a thread and swaying between life and death. Never does a soothing strain come in to mitigate the fatiguing suspense. It really is as though the composer had had no other object in view than to produce a baroque effect without troubling himself about musical truth or unity, or about the capabilities of human voices which are swamped by this flood of instrumental noise.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: death


These words struck the vicar a blow, which he felt the more because his late reverie had made him completely happy.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: words


Andrea shot a swift look at Marianna, who was watching him. And he noted the beautiful Italian head, the exquisite proportion and rich coloring that revealed one of those organizations in which every human power is harmoniously balanced, he sounded the gulf that divided this couple, brought together by fate. Well content with the promise he inferred from this dissimilarity between the husband and wife, he made no attempt to control a liking which ought to have raised a barrier between the fair Marianna and himself. He was already conscious of feeling a sort of respectful pity for this man, whose only joy she was, as he understood the dignified and serene acceptance of ill fortune that was expressed in Gambara's mild and melancholy gaze.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: fate


Infuse with passion, then, if you will, this friendship, and let the voice of love disturb its calm.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: friendship


The sweetest of all consolations to suffering souls, to martyrs, to artists, in the worst of that divine agony which hatred and envy force upon them, is to meet with praise where they have hitherto found censure and injustice.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Pierrette

Tags: artists


The sick man himself had wasted greatly. All the life in him seemed to have taken refuge in the still brilliant eyes.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: life


Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: children


The number of those rare women who, like the Virgins of the Parable, have kept their lamps lighted, will always appear very small in the eyes of the defenders of virtue and fine feeling; but we must needs exclude it from the total sum of honest women, and this subtraction, consoling as it is, will increase the danger which threatens husbands, will intensify the scandal of their married life, and involve, more or less, the reputation of all other lawful spouses.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: women