HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES XVII

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letter to Zulma Carraud, July 2, 1832

Tags: writing


Conviction brings a silent, indefinable beauty into faces made of the commonest human clay; the devout worshiper at any shrine reflects something of its golden glow, even as the glory of a noble love shines like a sort of light from a woman's face.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Tags: conviction


Is not Paris a vast field in perpetual turmoil from a storm of interests beneath which are whirled along a crop of human beings, who are, more often than not, reaped by death, only to be born again as pinched as ever, men whose twisted and contorted faces give out at every pore the instinct, the desire, the poisons with which their brains are pregnant; not faces so much as masks; masks of weakness, masks of strength, masks of misery, masks of joy, masks of hypocrisy; all alike worn and stamped with the indelible signs of a panting cupidity?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Girl with the Golden Eyes

Tags: death


We cannot measure the vast orbit of the Divine thought of which we are but an atom as small as God is great; but we can feel its vastness, we can kneel, adore, and wait.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: God


Science is the language of the Temporal world, Love is that of the Spiritual world.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: language


One thought borne inward, one prayer uplifted, one suffering endured, one echo of the Word within us, and our souls are forever changed.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: prayer


The virtue of women is perhaps a question of temperament.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: question


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


Then, let every one question his conscience on this point, and search his memory if he has ever met a man who confined himself to the love of one woman only!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: conscience


Happiness in marriage results in perfect union of soul between a married pair. Hence it follows that in order to be happy a man must feel himself bound by certain rules of honor and delicacy. After having enjoyed the benefit of the social law which consecrates the natural craving, he must obey also the secret laws of nature by which sentiments unfold themselves. If he stakes his happiness on being himself loved, he must himself love sincerely: nothing can resist a genuine passion.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: happiness


Love is the poetry of the senses. It has the destiny of all that which is great in man and of all that which proceeds from his thought. Either it is sublime, or it is not. When once it exists, it exists forever and goes on always increasing. This is the love which the ancients made the child of heaven and earth.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: destiny


We regard it as an infallible principle that great sweetness of disposition united in a woman with plainness that is not repulsive, form two indubitable elements of success in securing the greatest possible happiness to the home.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: happiness


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


Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Père Goriot

Tags: suffering


If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Père Goriot

Tags: civilization


Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: courtesy


Raise those great black eyes of yours, fixed on my opening sentence, and keep this excitement for the letter which shall tell you of my first love. By the way, why always "first?" Is there, I wonder, a second love?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: love


What a handsome pair! Strange thoughts assail me as it becomes plain to me that these two, so perfectly matched in birth, wealth, and mental superiority, live entirely apart, and have nothing in common but their name. The show of unity is only for the world.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: birth


For some days I have begun to tremble when I think of the destiny of women, and to understand why so many wear a sad face beneath the flush brought by the unnatural excitement of social dissipation. Marriage is a mere matter of chance. Look at yours. A storm of wild thoughts has passed over my mind. To be loved every day the same, yet with a difference, to be loved as much after ten years of happiness as on the first day!—such a love demands years. The lover must be allowed to languish, curiosity must be piqued and satisfied, feeling roused and responded to.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: chance


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