French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
So thorough an old maid as Sylvie was certain to make good progress in the way of salvation.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Pierrette
Passions are as mean as they are cruel.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Madness that is so nearly allied to genius can know no cure in this world.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gambara
Yes, Prayer--the aspiration of the soul freed absolutely from the body--bears all forces within it, and applies them to the constant and perseverant union of the Visible and the Invisible. When you possess the faculty of praying without weariness, with love, with force, with certainty, with intelligence, your spiritualized nature will presently be invested with power. Like a rushing wind, like a thunderbolt, it cuts its way through all things and shares the power of God.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
The higher thy flight the less canst thou see the abysses. There are none in heaven.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
The artisan, the man of the proletariat, who uses his hands, his tongue, his back, his right arm, his five fingers, to live—well, this very man, who should be the first to economize his vital principle, outruns his strength, yokes his wife to some machine, wears out his child, and ties him to the wheel.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
It is necessary for the full understanding of this history to explain how the natural discernment and spirit of analysis which old women bring to bear on the actions of others gave power to Mademoiselle Gamard, and what were the resources on her side. Accompanied by the taciturn Abbe Troubert she made a round of evening visits to five or six houses, at each of which she met a circle of a dozen or more persons, united by kindred tastes and the same general situation in life. Among them were one or two men who were influenced by the gossip and prejudices of their servants; five or six old maids who spent their time in sifting the words and scrutinizing the actions of their neighbours and others in the class below them; besides these, there were several old women who busied themselves in retailing scandal, keeping an exact account of each person’s fortune, striving to control or influence the actions of others, prognosticating marriages, and blaming the conduct of friends as sharply as that of enemies. These persons, spread about the town like the capillary fibres of a plant, sucked in, with the thirst of a leaf for the dew, the news and the secrets of each household, and transmitted them mechanically to the Abbe Troubert, as the leaves convey to the branch the moisture they absorb.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
It is very easy to accuse a young person for suffering herself to be deceived, in the desire to escape, at any price, from the condition of girlhood; but such an accusation is only just in the present condition of our manners. At the present day, a young person knows nothing about seduction and its snares, she relies altogether upon her weakness, and mingling with this reliance the convenient maxims of the fashionable world, she takes as her guide while under the control of those desires which everything conspires to excite, her own deluding fancies, which prove a guide all the more treacherous, because a young girl rarely ever confides to another the secret thoughts of her first love.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
A husband ought never to be the first to go to sleep and the last to awaken.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
When two human beings are united by pleasure, all social conventionalities are put aside. This situation conceals a reef on which many vessels are wrecked. A husband is lost, if he once forgets there is a modesty which is quite independent of coverings. Conjugal love ought never either to put on or to take away the bandage of its eyes, excepting at the due season.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Then, let every one question his conscience on this point, and search his memory if he has ever met a man who confined himself to the love of one woman only!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
An honest woman is necessarily a married woman.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
You, you sybarites, canting bigots, vagabonds, hypocrites, sneaks, cudgellers, bucks, pilgrims, and such like, who are disguised as masqueraders to cheat the world! .... to heel, hounds; get out of the way! Away, pudden-heads! What, are you still there, in the devil's name?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Squeeze marriage as much as you like, you will never extract anything from it but fun for bachelors and boredom for husbands.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
I am a galley slave to pen and ink.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letter to Zulma Carraud, July 2, 1832
If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
In the terrific tumult of raving passions, the holy Voice would have been unheard.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gambara
Here, the hearers receiving a musical impression do not work it out in themselves, as religion bids us work out the texts of Scripture in prayer. Hence it is very difficult to make them understand that there is in nature an eternal melody, exquisitely sweet, a perfect harmony, disturbed only by revolutions independent of the divine will, as passions are uncontrolled by the will of men.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gambara
Thought alone holds the tradition of the bygone life. The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source of human genius.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
Man dies in despair while the Spirit dies in ecstasy.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita