French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
Glory is a poison, good to be taken only in small doses.
HONORE DE BALZAC
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attributed, Day's Collacon
Anything may be expected and anything may be supposed of a woman who is in love.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Marriage is better known than Barabbas; all the ideas which it calls up have been circulated in our books since the world began, and there is no useful opinion, no absurd scheme, but it finds an author, a printer, a library, and a reader.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Marriage is a matter concerning the whole of life, whilst love aims only at pleasure. On the other hand, marriage will remain when pleasures have vanished, and it is the source of interests far more precious than those of the man and woman entering on the alliance.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
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
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
From the moment that your suspicions are aroused, you ought to be like a man mounted on a tricky horse, who always watches the ears of the beast, in fear of being thrown from the saddle.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
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
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
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
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
Bathilde de Chargeboeuf had not only the incontestable superiority of beauty over her rival, but that of dress as well. She was dazzlingly fair. At twenty-five her shoulders were fully developed, and the curves of her beautiful figure were exquisite. The roundness of her throat, the purity of its lines, the wealth of her golden hair, the charming grace of her smile, the distinguished carriage of her head, the character of her features, the fine eyes finely placed beneath a well-formed brow, her every motion, noble and high-bred, and her light and graceful figure,—all were in harmony. Her hands were beautiful, and her feet slender. Health gave her, perhaps, too much the look of a handsome barmaid. "But that can’t be a defect in the eyes of a Rogron," sighed Madame Tiphaine. Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf’s dress when she made her first appearance in Provins at the Rogrons’ house was very simple. Her brown merino gown edged with green embroidery was worn low-necked; but a tulle fichu, carefully drawn down by hidden strings, covered her neck and shoulders, though it opened a little in front, where its folds were caught together with a sevigne. Beneath this delicate fabric Bathilde’s beauties seemed all the more enticing and coquettish. She took off her velvet bonnet and her shawl on arriving, and showed her pretty ears adorned with what were then called "ear-drops" in gold. She wore a little jeannette—a black velvet ribbon with a heart attached—round her throat, where it shone like the jet ring which fantastic nature had fastened round the tail of a white angora cat. She knew all the little tricks of a girl who seeks to marry; her fingers arranged her curls which were not in the least out of order; she entreated Rogron to fasten a cuff-button, thus showing him her wrist, a request which that dazzled fool rudely refused, hiding his emotions under the mask of indifference. The timidity of the only love he was ever to feel in the whole course of his life took an external appearance of dislike. Sylvie and her friend Celeste Habert were deceived by it; not so Vinet, the wise head of this doltish circle, among whom no one really coped with him but the priest,—the colonel being for a long time his ally.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Pierrette
The winters are to fashionable women what a campaign once was to the soldiers of the Empire.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
La Fausse Maîtresse
The old man’s lips were drawn in puckers, like a curtain, to either corner of his mouth.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
The most natural feelings are those we are least willing to confess.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gambara
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
Life -- is it anything more than a machine to which money imparts the motion?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
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
Those who spend too fast never grow rich.
HONORE DE BALZAC
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
The woman who is happy in her affections does not go much into the world.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage