HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES XXIV

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)


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I pitied him as I might have pitied a diseased creature. But, at the same time, I knew quite well that while he had millions of francs at his command, he possessed the world no less in idea—that world which he had explored, ransacked, weighed, appraised, and exploited.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC
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Gobseck


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Tags: time


All that has to do with matters of material existence I leave to my wife.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara


Glory is a poison, good to be taken only in small doses.

HONORE DE BALZAC

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: glory


Marriage may be considered in three ways, politically, as well as from a civil and moral point of view: as a law, as a contract and as an institution. As a law, its object is a reproduction of the species; as a contract, it relates to the transmission of property; as an institution, it is a guarantee which all men give and by which all are bound: they have father and mother, and they will have children. Marriage, therefore, ought to be the object of universal respect. Society can only take into consideration those cardinal points, which, from a social point of view, dominate the conjugal question.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: law


Now, if a knowledge of mathematical laws gave us these four great musicians, what may we not attain to if we can discover the physical laws in virtue of which—grasp this clearly—we may collect, in larger or smaller quantities, according to the proportions we may require, an ethereal substance diffused in the atmosphere which is the medium alike of music and of light, of the phenomena of vegetation and of animal life! Do you follow me? Those new laws would arm the composer with new powers by supplying him with instruments superior of those now in use, and perhaps with a potency of harmony immense as compared with that now at his command. If every modified shade of sound answers to a force, that must be known to enable us to combine all these forces in accordance with their true laws.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: harmony


Old maids who have never yielded in their habits of life or in their characters to other lives and other characters, as the fate of woman exacts, have, as a general thing, a mania for making others give way to them.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: fate


Anything may be expected and anything may be supposed of a woman who is in love.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


In love, putting aside all consideration of the soul, the heart of a woman is like a lyre which does not reveal its secret, excepting to him who is a skillful player.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


Life -- is it anything more than a machine to which money imparts the motion?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: money


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

Tags: death


Before a woman gives herself entirely up to her lover, she ought to consider well what his love has to offer her. The gift of her esteem and confidence should necessarily precede that of her heart.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: confidence


Do not therefore allow yourself to be led astray by the specious good nature of such an institution as that of twin beds. It is the silliest, the most treacherous, the most dangerous in the world. Shame and anathema to him who conceived it!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: nature


Mankind are not perfect, but one age is more or less hypocritical than another, and then simpletons say that its morality is high or low.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Père Goriot

Tags: age


Let us leave hearts out of the question. Business is business, and business is not carried on with sentimentality like romances.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: business


Those who spend too fast never grow rich.

HONORE DE BALZAC

At the Sign of the Cat and Racket

Tags: money


Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of most social matters.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Pierrette

Tags: power


In every case we receive only in proportion to what we give.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


What a wretched dramatist Shakespeare is! Othello is in love with glory; he wins battles, he gives orders, he struts about and is all over the place while Desdemona sits at home; and Desdemona, who sees herself neglected for the silly fuss of public life, is quite meek all the time. Such a sheep deserves to be slaughtered.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: William Shakespeare


The winters are to fashionable women what a campaign once was to the soldiers of the Empire.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

La Fausse Maîtresse

Tags: winter


Reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.

HONORE DE BALZAC

A Woman of Thirty

Tags: reason