French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
Tyranny produces two results, exactly opposite in character, and which are symbolized in those two great types of the slave in classical times -- Epictetus and Spartacus. The one is hatred with its evil train, the other meekness with its Christian graces.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Thieves, spies, lovers, diplomats, and slaves of any kind alone know the resources and comforts of a glance. They alone know what it contains of meaning, sweetness, thought, anger, villainy, displayed by the modification of that ray of light which conveys the soul.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Have the pebbles of the fiord a perception of their combined being? have they a consciousness of the colors they present to the eye of man? do they hear the music of the waves that lap them? Let us therefore spring over and not attempt to sound the abysmal depths presented to our minds in the union of a Material universe and a Spiritual universe,—a creation visible, ponderable, tangible, terminating in a creation invisible, imponderable, intangible; completely dissimilar, separated by the void, yet united by indisputable bonds and meeting in a being who derives equally from the one and from the other! Let us mingle in one world these two worlds, absolutely irreconcilable to your philosophies, but conjoined by fact.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
The inexorable box which keeps its mouth open to all comers receives its epistolary provender from all hands.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
Two persons are married. The myrmidons of the Minotaur, young and old, have usually the politeness to leave the bride and bridegroom entirely to themselves at first. They look upon the husband as an artisan, whose business it is to trim, polish, cut into facets and mount the diamond, which is to pass from hand to hand in order to be admired all around. Moreover, the aspect of a young married couple much taken with each other always rejoices the heart of those among the celibates who are known as roues; they take good care not to disturb the excitement by which society is to be profited; they also know that heavy showers to not last long. They therefore keep quiet; they watch, and wait, with incredible vigilance, for the moment when bride and groom begin to weary of the seventh heaven.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
To sum up, the world is mine without effort of mine, and the world has not the slightest hold on me.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
Like an eagle darting on his prey, he took her utterly to him, set her on his knees, and felt with an indescribable intoxication the voluptuous pressure of this girl, whose richly developed beauties softly enveloped him.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.
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
What is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood?
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
The passing joys of earthly love are gleams which reveal to certain souls the coming of joys more durable; just as the discovery of a single law of nature leads certain privileged beings to a conception of the system of the universe.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
The married woman who is the most chaste may be also the most voluptuous.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
The man who enters his wife’s dressing-room is either a philosopher or an imbecile.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
Alas! if your wife has not yet kissed the apple of the Serpent, the Serpent stands before her.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
When Marie-Angelique left the maternal purgatory, she rose at once into the conjugal paradise prepared for her by Felix, rue du Rocher, in a house where all things were redolent of aristocracy, but where the varnish of society did not impede the ease and "laisser-aller" which young and loving hearts desire so much. From the start, Marie-Angelique tasted all the sweets of material life to the very utmost. For two years her husband made himself, as it were, her purveyor. He explained to her, by degrees, and with great art, the things of life; he initiated her slowly into the mysteries of the highest society; he taught her the genealogies of noble families; he showed her the world; he guided her taste in dress; he trained her to converse; he took her from theatre to theatre, and made her study literature and current history. This education he accomplished with all the care of a lover, father, master, and husband; but he did it soberly and discreetly; he managed both enjoyments and instructions in such a manner as not to destroy the value of her religious ideas. In short, he carried out his enterprise with the wisdom of a great master. At the end of four years, he had the happiness of having formed in the Comtesse de Vandenesse one of the most lovable and remarkable young women of our day.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Nature has favored our sex in giving us a choice between love and motherhood. I have made mine. My children shall be my gods, and this spot of earth my Eldorado.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
How hungry one's heart gets!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Civilization is come. It has shut up a million of men within an area of four square leagues; it has stalled them in streets, houses, apartments, rooms, and chambers eight feet square; after a time it will make them shut up one upon another like the tubes of a telescope.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage