HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES X

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

The caresses over which love presides are always pure.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


Your young wife will never take a lover, as we have elsewhere said, without making serious reflections. As soon as the honeymoon wanes, you will find that you have aroused in her a sentiment of pleasure which you have not satisfied; you have opened to her the book of life; and she has derived an excellent idea from the prosaic dullness which distinguishes your complacent love, of the poetry which is the natural result when souls and pleasures are in accord. Like a timid bird, just startled by the report of a gun which has ceased, she puts her head out of her nest, looks round her, and sees the world; and knowing the word of a charade which you have played, she feels instinctively the void which exists in your languishing passion. She divines that it is only with a lover that she can regain the delightful exercise of her free will in love. You have dried the green wood in preparation for a fire.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


The exercise of thought, whatever people may say, is more noble than the exercise of bodily organs, and we give precedence to science over cookery and to intellectual training over hygiene.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: exercise


We may note within ourselves many a long struggle the end of which is one of our own actions--struggles which are, as it were, the reverse side of humanity. This reverse side belongs to God; the obverse side to men.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: humanity


Wisdom is the understanding of celestial things to which the Spirit is brought by Love.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: love


By remaining unmarried, a creature of the female sex becomes void of meaning; selfish and cold, she creates repulsion.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: sex


Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Père Goriot

Tags: wealth


Before taking up the subject of modesty, it may perhaps be necessary to inquire whether there is such a thing. Is it anything in a woman but well understood coquetry?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: modesty


There are husbands, tall and of superior intellect, whose wives have lovers who are ugly, short, or stupid.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: lovers


You are a woman, and you can certainly win a priest to your interests.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours


The good man signed the papers with the innocence of a child who does what his mother orders without question.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: innocence


To sum up, the world is mine without effort of mine, and the world has not the slightest hold on me.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: effort


Humble country pleasures will enliven the monotony of my future. It shall be my ambition to enlarge the oasis round my house, and to give it the lordly shade of fine trees. My turf, though Provencal, shall be always green.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: ambition


Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Père Goriot

Tags: women


Well, as for me, I admire literary people, but from a distance. I find them intolerable; in conversation they are despotic; I do not know what displeases me more, their faults or their good qualities. In short (he swallows his chestnut), people of genius are like tonics—you like, but you must use them temperately.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: conversation


A man may be put to death by a thought.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: death


Women understand better than we do the art of analyzing the two human feelings, which alternately form their weapons of attack, or the weapons of which they are victims. They have the instinct of love, because it is their whole life, and of jealousy, because it is almost the only means by which they can control us.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: art


The Spirit of Love has acquired strength, the result of all vanquished terrestrial passions.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: love


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

Tags: power


The Italian school has lost sight of the high mission of art. Instead of elevating the crowd, it has condescended to the crowd; it has won its success only by accepting the suffrages of all comers, and appealing to the vulgar minds which constitute the majority. Such a success is mere street juggling.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: success