French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
The Spirit of Love has acquired strength, the result of all vanquished terrestrial passions.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
A man may be put to death by a thought.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Time is their tyrant: it fails them, it escapes them; they can neither expand it nor cut it short.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
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
You are a woman, and you can certainly win a priest to your interests.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
By remaining unmarried, a creature of the female sex becomes void of meaning; selfish and cold, she creates repulsion.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
Your young wife will never take a lover, as we have elsewhere said, without making serious reflections. As soon as the honeymoon wanes, you will find that you have aroused in her a sentiment of pleasure which you have not satisfied; you have opened to her the book of life; and she has derived an excellent idea from the prosaic dullness which distinguishes your complacent love, of the poetry which is the natural result when souls and pleasures are in accord. Like a timid bird, just startled by the report of a gun which has ceased, she puts her head out of her nest, looks round her, and sees the world; and knowing the word of a charade which you have played, she feels instinctively the void which exists in your languishing passion. She divines that it is only with a lover that she can regain the delightful exercise of her free will in love. You have dried the green wood in preparation for a fire.
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
Physical love is a craving like hunger, excepting that man eats all the time, and in love his appetite is neither so persistent nor so regular as at the table. A piece of bread and a carafe of water will satisfy the hunger of any man; but our civilization has brought to light the science of gastronomy. Love has its piece of bread, but it has also its science of loving, that science which we call coquetry, a delightful word which the French alone possess, for that science originated in this country.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Man is the minister of Nature, and society engrafts itself upon her.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
There are husbands, tall and of superior intellect, whose wives have lovers who are ugly, short, or stupid.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected at least one woman.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Wisdom is the understanding of celestial things to which the Spirit is brought by Love.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Before taking up the subject of modesty, it may perhaps be necessary to inquire whether there is such a thing. Is it anything in a woman but well understood coquetry?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Oh! after ten years of marriage to find under his roof, and to see all the time, a young girl of from sixteen to eighteen, fresh, dressed with taste, the treasures of whose beauty seem to breathe defiance, whose frank bearing is irresistibly attractive, whose downcast eyes seem to fear you, whose timid glance tempts you, and for whom the conjugal bed has no secrets, for she is at once a virgin and an experienced woman! How can a man remain cold, like St. Anthony, before such powerful sorcery, and have the courage to remain faithful to the good principles represented by a scornful wife, whose face is always stern, whose manners are always snappish, and who frequently refuses to be caressed? What husband is stoical enough to resist such fires, such frosts? There, where you see a new harvest of pleasure, the young innocent sees an income, and your wife her liberty. It is a little family compact, which is signed in the interest of good will.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
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
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
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