French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
Before a woman gives herself entirely up to her lover, she ought to consider well what his love has to offer her. The gift of her esteem and confidence should necessarily precede that of her heart.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
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Physiology of Marriage
In every case we receive only in proportion to what we give.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
The King stands for us all. To die for the King is to die for oneself, for one's family, which, like the kingdom, cannot die.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Those who spend too fast never grow rich.
HONORE DE BALZAC
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
Men may weary by their constancy, but women never.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Each household gathered in its chimney-corner, in houses carefully closed from the outer air, and well supplied with biscuit, melted butter, dried fish, and other provisions laid in for the seven-months winter. The very smoke of these dwellings was hardly seen, half-hidden as they were beneath the snow, against the weight of which they were protected by long planks reaching from the roof and fastened at some distance to solid blocks on the ground, forming a covered way around each building.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
None but fools and invalids can find pleasure in shuffling cards all evening long to find out whether they shall win a few pence at the end.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
Gold is the spiritual basis of existing society.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
There are men so situated in life that they can never enter the brilliant sphere in which honest women move, whether for want of a coat, or from their bashfulness, or from the failure of a mahout to introduce them.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
What a wretched dramatist Shakespeare is! Othello is in love with glory; he wins battles, he gives orders, he struts about and is all over the place while Desdemona sits at home; and Desdemona, who sees herself neglected for the silly fuss of public life, is quite meek all the time. Such a sheep deserves to be slaughtered.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
To be jealous is to exhibit, at once, the height of egotism, the error of amour-propre, the vexation of morbid vanity. Women rather encourage this ridiculous feeling, because by means of it they can obtain cashmere shawls, silver toilet sets, diamonds, which for them mark the high thermometer mark of their power. Moreover, unless you appear blinded by jealousy, your wife will not keep on her guard; for there is no pitfall which she does not distrust, excepting that which she makes for herself.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
There are no two dramas alike: there are hideous sores, deadly chagrins, love scenes, misery that soon will lie under the ripples of the Seine, young men’s joys that lead to the scaffold, the laughter of despair, and sumptuous banquets. Yesterday it was a tragedy. A worthy soul of a father drowned himself because he could not support his family. To-morrow is a comedy.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
Reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.
HONORE DE BALZAC
A Woman of Thirty
Ambitious men ought to follow curved lines, the shortest road in politics.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
When women are secretly to blame they often show ostensibly the utmost womanly pride. It is a dissimulation of mind for which we ought to be obliged to them. The deception is full of dignity, if not of grandeur.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
As ideas are capable of infinite combination, it ought to be the same with pleasures.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
What sentiment of admiration must rise in the soul of a philosopher on discovering that there is, perhaps, but one single principle in the world, as there is but one God; and that our ideas and our affections are subject to the same laws which cause the sun to rise, the flowers to bloom, the universe to teem with life!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
The Countess sat playing with her children. When she heard my name, she sprang up and came to meet me, then she sat down and pointed without a word to a chair by the fire. Her face wore the inscrutable mask beneath which women of the world conceal their most vehement emotions. Trouble had withered that face already. Nothing of its beauty now remained, save the marvelous outlines in which its principal charm had lain.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Everywhere you find the man of thews and sinews who toils, and the lymphatic man who torments himself; and pleasures are everywhere the same, for when all sensations are exhausted, all that survives is Vanity—Vanity is the abiding substance of us, the I in us.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck