HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES X

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

A man may be put to death by a thought.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: death


Physical love is a craving like hunger, excepting that man eats all the time, and in love his appetite is neither so persistent nor so regular as at the table. A piece of bread and a carafe of water will satisfy the hunger of any man; but our civilization has brought to light the science of gastronomy. Love has its piece of bread, but it has also its science of loving, that science which we call coquetry, a delightful word which the French alone possess, for that science originated in this country.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: science


The man who enters his wife’s dressing-room is either a philosopher or an imbecile.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


Alas! if your wife has not yet kissed the apple of the Serpent, the Serpent stands before her.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


How hungry one's heart gets!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides


Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: virtue


Seen from a distance, Raoul Nathan was a very fine meteor. Fashion accepted his ways and his appearance. His borrowed republicanism gave him, for the time being, that Jansenist harshness assumed by the defenders of the popular cause, while they inwardly scoff at it--a quality not without charm in the eyes of women.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: appearance


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


Time is their tyrant: it fails them, it escapes them; they can neither expand it nor cut it short.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Girl with the Golden Eyes


To seize adroitly upon the varieties of pleasure, to develop them, to impart to them a new style, an original expression, constitutes the genius of a husband.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: genius


Civilization is come. It has shut up a million of men within an area of four square leagues; it has stalled them in streets, houses, apartments, rooms, and chambers eight feet square; after a time it will make them shut up one upon another like the tubes of a telescope.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: Men


Well, gold contains all things in embryo; gold realizes all things for us.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: gold


Though all things in society as well as in the universe are said to have a purpose, there do exist here below certain beings whose purpose and utility seem inexplicable.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: purpose


To beat a retreat with the honors of war has always been the triumph of the ablest generals.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: war


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: love


Oh! after ten years of marriage to find under his roof, and to see all the time, a young girl of from sixteen to eighteen, fresh, dressed with taste, the treasures of whose beauty seem to breathe defiance, whose frank bearing is irresistibly attractive, whose downcast eyes seem to fear you, whose timid glance tempts you, and for whom the conjugal bed has no secrets, for she is at once a virgin and an experienced woman! How can a man remain cold, like St. Anthony, before such powerful sorcery, and have the courage to remain faithful to the good principles represented by a scornful wife, whose face is always stern, whose manners are always snappish, and who frequently refuses to be caressed? What husband is stoical enough to resist such fires, such frosts? There, where you see a new harvest of pleasure, the young innocent sees an income, and your wife her liberty. It is a little family compact, which is signed in the interest of good will.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: beauty


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


Man is the minister of Nature, and society engrafts itself upon her.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: nature


The average age at which a man marries is thirty years; the average age at which his passions, his most violent desires for genesial delight are developed, is twenty years. Now during the ten fairest years of his life, during the green season in which his beauty, his youth and his wit make him more dangerous to husbands than at any other epoch of his life, his finds himself without any means of satisfying legitimately that irresistible craving for love which burns in his whole nature. During this time, representing the sixth part of human life, we are obliged to admit that the sixth part or less of our total male population and the sixth part which is the most vigorous is placed in a position which is perpetually exhausting for them, and dangerous for society.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: life


Love, dear, is in my eyes the first principle of all the virtues, conformed to the divine likeness. Like all other first principles, it is not a matter of arithmetic; it is the Infinite in us.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: principles