French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
What woman wants pity?... A man's sternness is to us our only pardon.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Wit is thought to be a quality rare in comedians. It is so natural to suppose that persons who spend their lives in showing things on the outside have nothing within.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
A good mind protects like a divinity; disenchantment is as keen-sighted as a surgeon; experience as foreseeing as a mother. Those three qualities are the cardinal virtues of a safe marriage.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
If men of imagination and good sense, like you, desert one camp only to join the other; if they cannot keep to the happy medium between two forms of extravagance, we shall always be exposed to the satire of the sophists, who deny all progress, who compare the genius of man to this tablecloth, which, being too short to cover the whole of Signor Giardini's table, decks one end at the expense of the other.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gambara
Clouds signify the veil of the Most High.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
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
Dost thou not see the nature of my love, a love without self-interest; a sentiment full of thee, thee only; a love which follows thee into the future to light that future for thee—for it is the one True Light. Canst thou now conceive with what ardor I would have thee leave this life which weighs thee down, and behold thee nearer than thou art to that world where Love is never-failing? Can it be aught but suffering to love for one life only? Hast thou not felt a thirst for the eternal love? Dost thou not feel the bliss to which a creature rises when, with twin-soul, it loves the Being who betrays not love, Him before whom we kneel in adoration?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
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
Certain women of a lymphatic temperament will pretend to have the spleen and will even feign death, if they can only gain thereby the benefit of a secret divorce.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Feeble folk are as easily reassured as they are frightened.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
Your wife ought to drink water, lightly tinged with a Burgundy wine agreeable to her taste, but destitute of any tonic properties; every other kind of wine would be bad for her. Never allow her to drink water alone; if you do, you are lost...
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
No dangerous idea, unhealthy or even equivocal, soiled the pure pulp of their brain; their hearts were innocent, their hands were horribly red, and they glowed with health. Eve did not issue more innocent from the hands of God than these two girls from their mother’s home when they went to the mayor’s office and the church to be married, after receiving the simple but terrible injunction to obey in all things two men with whom they were henceforth to live and sleep by day and by night. To their minds, nothing could be worse in the strange houses where they were to go than the maternal convent.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
The bad points of others show out so strongly against the good that they usually strike our eyes before they wound us.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
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
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
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
Thoughts of adultery do not take possession of the heart of a married woman all at once, like a shot from a pistol.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Who would not at the present moment wish to retain the persuasion that wives are virtuous? Are they not the supreme flower of the country? Are they not all blooming creatures, fascinating the world by their beauty, their youth, their life and their love? To believe in their virtue is a sort of social religion, for they are the ornament of the world, and form the chief glory of France.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
HONORE DE BALZAC
A Woman of Thirty
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