French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
As I took my leave of her, I caught a gleam of hate and rage in her eyes that made me shudder. We parted enemies. She would fain have crushed me out of existence; and for my own part, I felt pity for her, and for some natures pity is the deadliest of insults.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
If a woman has received a man’s education, she possesses in very truth the most brilliant and most fertile sources of happiness both to herself and to her husband; but this kind of woman is as rare as happiness itself; and if you do not possess her for your wife, your best course is to confine the one you do possess, for the sake of your common felicity, to the region of ideas she was born in, for you must not forget that one moment of pride in her might destroy you, by setting on the throne a slave who would immediately be tempted to abuse her power.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
The Spirit of Love has acquired strength, the result of all vanquished terrestrial passions.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
If a man cannot distinguish the difference between the pleasures of two consecutive nights, he has married too early.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Each night ought to have its menu.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Alas! if your wife has not yet kissed the apple of the Serpent, the Serpent stands before her.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
The exercise of thought, whatever people may say, is more noble than the exercise of bodily organs, and we give precedence to science over cookery and to intellectual training over hygiene.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
You are a woman, and you can certainly win a priest to your interests.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
An honest woman is one whom her lover fears to compromise.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
She worshiped her children. They were so young that she could hide the disorders of her life from their eyes, and could win their love.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
All the affected airs of sensibility which a woman puts on invariably deceive a lover; and on occasions when a husband shrugs his shoulders, a lover is in ecstasies.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Spirits of the pure, ye sacred flock, come forth from the hidden places, come on the surface of the luminous waves! The hour now is; come, assemble! Let us sing at the gates of the Sanctuary; our songs shall drive away the final clouds.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
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
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
In Paris no sentiment can withstand the drift of things, and their current compels a struggle in which the passions are relaxed: there love is a desire, and hatred a whim; there’s no true kinsman but the thousand-franc note, no better friend than the pawnbroker.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
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
She looked about her like a nightingale descending from a leafy covert to drink at a spring, to see if she were alone in the solitude, if the silence hid no witness; then she raised her head to Raoul, who bent his own, and let him take one kiss, the first and the only one that she ever gave in secret, feeling happier at that moment than she had felt in five years. Raoul thought all his toils well-paid. They both walked forward they scarcely knew where, but it was on the road to Auteuil; presently, however, they were forced to return and find their carriages, pacing together with the rhythmic step well-known to lovers. Raoul had faith in that kiss given with the quiet facility of a sacred sentiment. All the evil of it was in the mind of the world, not in that of the woman who walked beside him. Marie herself, given over to the grateful admiration which characterizes the love of woman, walked with a firm, light step on the graveled path, saying, like Raoul, but few words; yet those few were felt and full of meaning. The sky was cloudless, the tall trees had burgeoned, a few green shoots were already brightening their myriad of brown twigs. The shrubs, the birches, the willows, the poplars were showing their first diaphanous and tender foliage. No soul resists these harmonies. Love explained Nature as it had already explained society to Marie’s heart.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Humble country pleasures will enliven the monotony of my future. It shall be my ambition to enlarge the oasis round my house, and to give it the lordly shade of fine trees. My turf, though Provencal, shall be always green.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
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
Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides