French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
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
By dint of taking interest in everything, the Parisian ends by being interested in nothing. No emotion dominating his face, which friction has rubbed away, it turns gray like the faces of those houses upon which all kinds of dust and smoke have blown. In effect, the Parisian, with his indifference on the day for what the morrow will bring forth, lives like a child, whatever may be his age. He grumbles at everything, consoles himself for everything, jests at everything, forgets, desires, and tastes everything, seizes all with passion, quits all with indifference—his kings, his conquests, his glory, his idols of bronze or glass—as he throws away his stockings, his hats, and his fortune.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Ambitious men ought to follow curved lines, the shortest road in politics.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
The woman who is happy in her affections does not go much into the world.
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
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
Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
As ideas are capable of infinite combination, it ought to be the same with pleasures.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
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
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
Now a young bachelor of seventeen is apt to make deep cuts with his penknife in the parchment of contracts, as the chronicles of scandal will tell you.
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
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
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
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
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
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
Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Seraphita