French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
When a woman utters the name of a man but twice a day, there is perhaps some uncertainty about her feelings toward him—but if thrice?—Oh! oh!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
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
If a man strike his mistress it is a self-inflicted wound; but if he strike his wife it is suicide!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Like an eagle darting on his prey, he took her utterly to him, set her on his knees, and felt with an indescribable intoxication the voluptuous pressure of this girl, whose richly developed beauties softly enveloped him.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
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
Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.
HONORE DE BALZAC
attributed, Words of Wisdom: Honore de Balzac
True, I have my weak points; but were I a man, I should adore them. They arise from what is most promising in me.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
If a woman has received a man’s education, she possesses in very truth the most brilliant and most fertile sources of happiness both to herself and to her husband; but this kind of woman is as rare as happiness itself; and if you do not possess her for your wife, your best course is to confine the one you do possess, for the sake of your common felicity, to the region of ideas she was born in, for you must not forget that one moment of pride in her might destroy you, by setting on the throne a slave who would immediately be tempted to abuse her power.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
I longed for a companion to the kingdom of Light; I wished to show you that morsel of mud, I find you bound to it.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
A Voice is heard from the jaws of an Animal; a Hand writes on the wall before a feasting Court; an Eye gleams in the slumber of a king, and a Prophet explains the dream; Death, evoked, rises on the confines of the luminous sphere were faculties revive; Spirit annihilates Matter at the foot of that mystic ladder of the Seven Spiritual Worlds, one resting upon another in space and revealing themselves in shining waves that break in light upon the steps of the celestial Tabernacle. But however solemn the inward Revelation, however clear the visible outward Sign, be sure that on the morrow Balaam doubts both himself and his ass, Belshazzar and Pharaoh call Moses and Daniel to qualify the Word. The Spirit, descending, bears man above this earth, opens the seas and lets him see their depths, shows him lost species, wakens dry bones whose dust is the soil of valleys; the Apostle writes the Apocalypse, and twenty centuries later human science ratifies his words and turns his visions into maxims. And what comes of it all? Why this,—that the peoples live as they have ever lived, as they lived in the first Olympiad, as they lived on the morrow of Creation, and on the eve of the great cataclysm. The waves of Doubt have covered all things. The same floods surge with the same measured motion on the human granite which serves as a boundary to the ocean of intelligence. When man has inquired of himself whether he has seen that which he has seen, whether he has heard the words that entered his ears, whether the facts were facts and the idea is indeed an idea, then he resumes his wonted bearing, thinks of his worldly interests, obeys some envoy of death and of oblivion whose dusky mantle covers like a pall an ancient Humanity of which the moderns retain no memory. Man never pauses; he goes his round, he vegetates until the appointed day when his Axe falls. If this wave force, this pressure of bitter waters prevents all progress, no doubt it also warns of death. Spirits prepared by faith among the higher souls of earth can alone perceive the mystic ladder of Jacob.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
Do for God what you do for your ambitious projects, what you do in consecrating yourself to Art, what you have done when you loved a human creature or sought some secret of human science. Is not God the whole of science, the all of love, the source of poetry? Surely His riches are worthy of being coveted! His treasure is inexhaustible, His poem infinite, His love immutable, His science sure and darkened by no mysteries.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
Correspondence, in which the pen is always bolder than speech, and thought, wreathing itself with flowers, allows itself to be seen without disguise.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
A society of atheists would immediately invent a religion.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Le catechisme social
I went to bed sorrowful, and I still suffer from the shock produced by this first collision of my frank, joyous nature with the harsh laws of society. Already the highway hedges are flecked with my white wool!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Yesterday, at the Italian Opera, I could feel some one was looking at me; my eyes were drawn, as by a magnet, to two wells of fire, gleaming like carbuncles in a dim corner of the orchestra. Henarez never moved his eyes from me. The wretch had discovered the one spot from which he could see me—and there he was. I don't know what he may be as a politician, but for love he has a genius.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
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
Man is the minister of Nature, and society engrafts itself upon her.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
If love is the first of the passions, it is because it gratifies them all.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
A virtuous woman has in her heart one fibre less or one fibre more than other women; she is either stupid or sublime.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage