French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
A man loves with more or less passion according to the number of cords which his pretty mistress binds to his heart.
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
For my part, I like those long trials of the old-fashioned chivalry. That lout of a young lord, who took offence because his sovereign-lady sent him down among the lions to fetch her glove, was, in my opinion, very impertinent, and a fool too. Doubtless the lady had in reserve for him some exquisite flower of love, which he lost, as he well deserved—the puppy!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Well, gold contains all things in embryo; gold realizes all things for us.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
In these times, liberty is no longer proscribed; it is going its rounds again.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gambara
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
A few observations upon the soul of Paris may explain the causes of its cadaverous physiognomy, which has but two ages—youth and decay: youth, wan and colorless; decay, painted to seem young.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Between the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady’s window.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Romans et contes philosophiques
A virtuous woman has in her heart one fibre less or one fibre more than other women; she is either stupid or sublime.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Love is the union between natural craving and sentiment.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
What an admirable maneuver it would be to make a wife dance, and to feed her on vegetables!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Love consists almost always in conversation. There are few things inexhaustible in a lover: goodness, gracefulness and delicacy. To feel everything, to divine everything, to anticipate everything; to reproach without bringing affliction upon a tender heart; to make a present without pride; to double the value of a certain action by the way in which it is done; to flatter rather by actions than by words; to make oneself understood rather than to produce a vivid impression; to touch without striking; to make a look and the sound of the voice produce the effect of a caress; never to produce embarrassment; to amuse without offending good taste; always to touch the heart; to speak to the soul—this is all that women ask. They will abandon all the delights of all the nights of Messalina, if only they may live with a being who will yield them those caresses of the soul, for which they are so eager, and which cost nothing to men if only they have a little consideration.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
La Duchesse de Langeais
Vice and disappointment and vindictiveness are the best of all detectives.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
The Italian school has lost sight of the high mission of art. Instead of elevating the crowd, it has condescended to the crowd; it has won its success only by accepting the suffrages of all comers, and appealing to the vulgar minds which constitute the majority. Such a success is mere street juggling.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gambara
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
To beat a retreat with the honors of war has always been the triumph of the ablest generals.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
Is not the fraction which you know, in relation to their totality, what a single number is to infinity?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
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
Well, as for me, I admire literary people, but from a distance. I find them intolerable; in conversation they are despotic; I do not know what displeases me more, their faults or their good qualities. In short (he swallows his chestnut), people of genius are like tonics—you like, but you must use them temperately.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage