HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES XIX

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

A wife is to her husband just what her husband has made her.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


Let the man whom I deign to love beware how he thinks of anything but loving me!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: love


For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Les Célibataires

Tags: passion


Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Le Siècle

Tags: kindness


The dark glee, the savage ferocity aroused by the possession of a few water-white pebbles, set me shuddering. I was dumb with amazement.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck


In the terrific tumult of raving passions, the holy Voice would have been unheard.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara


The girl of the golden eyes might be virgin, but innocent she was certainly not. The fantastic union of the mysterious and the real, of darkness and light, horror and beauty, pleasure and danger, paradise and hell, which had already been met with in this adventure, was resumed in the capricious and sublime being with which De Marsay dallied. All the utmost science or the most refined pleasure, all that Henri could know of that poetry of the senses which is called love, was excelled by the treasures poured forth by this girl, whose radiant eyes gave the lie to none of the promises which they made.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Girl with the Golden Eyes

Tags: pleasure


Man dies in despair while the Spirit dies in ecstasy.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: despair


So thorough an old maid as Sylvie was certain to make good progress in the way of salvation.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Pierrette

Tags: progress


Love is the most melodious of all harmonies.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


If love is the first of the passions, it is because it gratifies them all.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


If the God of goodness and indulgence who hovers over the worlds does not make a second washing of the human race, it is doubtless because so little success attended the first.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: God


Between two beings susceptible of love, the duration of passion is in proportion to the original resistance of the woman, or to the obstacles which the accidents of social life put in the way of your happiness.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: happiness


If the role of an honest woman were nothing more than perilous ... I would admit that it would serve. But it is tiresome; and I have never met a virtuous woman who did not think about deceiving somebody.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


I have already seen hundreds of men, young and middle-aged; not one has stirred the least feeling in me. No proof of admiration and devotion on their part, not even a sword drawn in my behalf, would have moved me. Love, dear, is the product of such rare conditions that it is quite possible to live a lifetime without coming across the being on whom nature has bestowed the power of making one's happiness. The thought is enough to make one shudder; for if this being is found too late, what then?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: admiration


He who is to win my heart, my dear, must be harsh and unbending with men, but gentle with women. His eagle eye must have power to quell with a single glance the least approach to ridicule. He will have a pitying smile for those who would jeer at sacred things, above all, at that poetry of the heart, without which life would be but a dreary commonplace. I have the greatest scorn for those who would rob us of the living fountain of religious beliefs, so rich in solace. His faith, therefore, should have the simplicity of a child, though united to the firm conviction of an intelligent man, who has examined the foundations of his creed. His fresh and original way of looking at things must be entirely free from affectation or desire to show off. His words will be few and fit, and his mind so richly stored, that he cannot possibly become a bore to himself any more than to others.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: conviction


Man himself is not a finished creation; if he were, God would not Be.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: God


You, you sybarites, canting bigots, vagabonds, hypocrites, sneaks, cudgellers, bucks, pilgrims, and such like, who are disguised as masqueraders to cheat the world! .... to heel, hounds; get out of the way! Away, pudden-heads! What, are you still there, in the devil's name?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


If a man would have the right to make stepping-stones of all the heads which crowd a drawing-room, he must be the lover of some artistic woman of fashion.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: fashion


A husband ought never to be the first to go to sleep and the last to awaken.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: sleep