HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES XVIII

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

A society of atheists would immediately invent a religion.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Le catechisme social

Tags: atheism


Men are like that, they can resist sound argument, yet yield to a glance.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

"Le Contrat de mariage", Scènes de la vie privée

Tags: men


The virtue of women is perhaps a question of temperament.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: question


Happiness in marriage results in perfect union of soul between a married pair. Hence it follows that in order to be happy a man must feel himself bound by certain rules of honor and delicacy. After having enjoyed the benefit of the social law which consecrates the natural craving, he must obey also the secret laws of nature by which sentiments unfold themselves. If he stakes his happiness on being himself loved, he must himself love sincerely: nothing can resist a genuine passion.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: happiness


Love is the poetry of the senses. It has the destiny of all that which is great in man and of all that which proceeds from his thought. Either it is sublime, or it is not. When once it exists, it exists forever and goes on always increasing. This is the love which the ancients made the child of heaven and earth.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: destiny


If poetry, music and painting have found infinite forms of expression, pleasure should be even more diversified. For in the three arts which aid us in seeking, often with little success, truth by means of analogy, the man stands alone with his imagination, while love is the union of two bodies and of two souls. If the three principal methods upon which we rely for the expression of thought require preliminary study in those whom nature has made poets, musicians or painters, is it not obvious that, in order, to be happy, it is necessary to be initiated into the secrets of pleasure? All men experience the craving for reproduction, as all feel hunger and thirst; but all are not called to be lovers and gastronomists. Our present civilization has proved that taste is a science, and it is only certain privileged beings who have learned how to eat and drink. Pleasure considered as an art is still waiting for its physiologists. As for ourselves, we are contented with pointing out that ignorance of the principles upon which happiness is founded, is the sole cause of that misfortune which is the lot of all the predestined.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: pleasure


A husband ought never to be the first to go to sleep and the last to awaken.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: sleep


How mad a man must appear when desire renders him alternately angry and tender, insolent and abject, biting as an epigram and soothing as a madrigal!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: desire


Man himself is not a finished creation; if he were, God would not Be.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: God


The higher thy flight the less canst thou see the abysses. There are none in heaven.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: Heaven


The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: genius


A fact worthy of remark is the aversion shown to such conversations by women who are enjoying some illicit happiness; they maintain before the eyes of the world a reserved, prudish, and even timid countenance; they seem to ask silence on the subject, or some condonation of their pleasure from society. When, on the contrary, a woman talks freely of such catastrophes, and seems to take pleasure in doing so, allowing herself to explain the emotions that justify the guilty parties, we may be sure that she herself is at the crossways of indecision, and does not know what road she might take.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: pleasure


Passions are as mean as they are cruel.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve


Even thrones rise and fall in France with fearful rapidity. Fifteen years have wreaked their will on a great empire, a monarchy, and a revolution. No one can now dare to count upon the future.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: France


So thorough an old maid as Sylvie was certain to make good progress in the way of salvation.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Pierrette

Tags: progress


Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Père Goriot

Tags: suffering


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


Little minds need to practise despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great souls thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Pierrette

Tags: tyranny


Conviction brings a silent, indefinable beauty into faces made of the commonest human clay; the devout worshiper at any shrine reflects something of its golden glow, even as the glory of a noble love shines like a sort of light from a woman's face.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Tags: conviction


There are no principles, only events; there are no laws, only circumstances: a superior man espouses events and circumstances the better to influence them. If fixed principles and laws really existed, countries wouldn't change them as often as we change shirts. One man can't be expected to show more sense than an entire nation.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Father Goriot

Tags: principle