HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES IX

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


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


Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Père Goriot

Tags: wealth


Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: joy


Humble country pleasures will enliven the monotony of my future. It shall be my ambition to enlarge the oasis round my house, and to give it the lordly shade of fine trees. My turf, though Provencal, shall be always green.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: ambition


A man may be put to death by a thought.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: death


The married woman who is the most chaste may be also the most voluptuous.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


Nature has favored our sex in giving us a choice between love and motherhood. I have made mine. My children shall be my gods, and this spot of earth my Eldorado.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: children


Tyranny produces two results, exactly opposite in character, and which are symbolized in those two great types of the slave in classical times -- Epictetus and Spartacus. The one is hatred with its evil train, the other meekness with its Christian graces.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: character


For want of exercising in nature’s own way the activity bestowed upon women, and yet impelled to spend it in some way or other, Mademoiselle Gamard had acquired the habit of using it in petty intrigues, provincial cabals, and those self-seeking schemes which occupy, sooner or later, the lives of all old maids.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: habit


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

Tags: pressure


The passing joys of earthly love are gleams which reveal to certain souls the coming of joys more durable; just as the discovery of a single law of nature leads certain privileged beings to a conception of the system of the universe.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: discovery


Have the pebbles of the fiord a perception of their combined being? have they a consciousness of the colors they present to the eye of man? do they hear the music of the waves that lap them? Let us therefore spring over and not attempt to sound the abysmal depths presented to our minds in the union of a Material universe and a Spiritual universe,—a creation visible, ponderable, tangible, terminating in a creation invisible, imponderable, intangible; completely dissimilar, separated by the void, yet united by indisputable bonds and meeting in a being who derives equally from the one and from the other! Let us mingle in one world these two worlds, absolutely irreconcilable to your philosophies, but conjoined by fact.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: universe


Two persons are married. The myrmidons of the Minotaur, young and old, have usually the politeness to leave the bride and bridegroom entirely to themselves at first. They look upon the husband as an artisan, whose business it is to trim, polish, cut into facets and mount the diamond, which is to pass from hand to hand in order to be admired all around. Moreover, the aspect of a young married couple much taken with each other always rejoices the heart of those among the celibates who are known as roues; they take good care not to disturb the excitement by which society is to be profited; they also know that heavy showers to not last long. They therefore keep quiet; they watch, and wait, with incredible vigilance, for the moment when bride and groom begin to weary of the seventh heaven.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: business


A man, like many another, of complex nature, he was easily fascinated by the comfort of luxury, without which he could hardly have lived; and, in the same way, he clung to the social distinctions which his principles contemned. Thus his theories as an artist, a thinker, and a poet were in frequent antagonism with his tastes, his feelings, and his habits as a man of rank and wealth; but he comforted himself for his inconsistencies by recognizing them in many Parisians, like himself liberal by policy and aristocrats by nature.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: nature


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: love


A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected at least one woman.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: marriage


The inexorable box which keeps its mouth open to all comers receives its epistolary provender from all hands.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


What is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood?

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: mothers


To sum up, the world is mine without effort of mine, and the world has not the slightest hold on me.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: effort