HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES XVIII

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

Feeble folk are as easily reassured as they are frightened.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours


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


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: love


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: language


When a human soul draws its first furrow straight, the rest will follow surely.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: soul


Silence is the only weapon by which such victims can conquer; it baffles the Cossack charges of envy, the savage skirmishings of suspicion; it does at times give victory, crushing and complete--for what is more complete than silence? it is absolute; it is one of the attributes of infinity.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Pierrette

Tags: envy


All the sensations which a woman yields to her lover, she gives in exchange; they return to her always intensified; they are as rich in what they give as in what they receive. This is the kind of commerce in which almost all husbands end by being bankrupt.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


Moreover, all lovers have the art of arranging a special code of signals, whose arbitrary import it is difficult to understand. At a ball, a flower placed in some odd way in the hair; at the theatre, a pocket handkerchief unfolded on the front of the box; rubbing the nose, wearing a belt of a particular color, putting the hat on one side, wearing one dress oftener than another, singing a certain song in a concert or touching certain notes on the piano; fixing the eyes on a point agreed; everything, in fact, from the hurdy-gurdy which passes your windows and goes away if you open the shutter, to the newspaper announcement of a horse for sale—all may be reckoned as correspondence.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: art


To write a letter, and to have it posted; to get an answer, to read it and burn it; there we have correspondence stated in the simplest terms.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


The virtue of women is perhaps a question of temperament.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: question


If love is a child, passion is a man.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Père Goriot

Tags: civilization


A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: life


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


Know this for certain—methods are always confounded with results; you will never succeed in separating the soul from the senses, spirit from matter.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: soul


A woman's life begins with her first passion.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: life


The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: genius


Thus your invisible moral universe and your visible physical universe are one and the same matter. We will not separate properties from substances, nor objects from effects. All that exists, all that presses upon us and overwhelms us from above or from below, before us or in us, all that which our eyes and our minds perceive, all these named and unnamed things compose—in order to fit the problem of Creation to the measure of your logic—a block of finite Matter; but were it infinite, God would still not be its master.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: universe


A lover has all the good points and all the bad points which are lacking in a husband.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage