French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
All ends in God; and many are the ways to find Him by walking straight before us.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
Men are like that, they can resist sound argument, yet yield to a glance.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
"Le Contrat de mariage", Scènes de la vie privée
Further, we acknowledge that, to the credit of our age, we meet, ever since the revival of morality and religion and during our own times, some women, here and there, so moral, so religious, so devoted to their duties, so upright, so precise, so stiff, so virtuous, so--that the devil himself dare not even look at them; they are guarded on all sides by rosaries, hours of prayer and directors. Pshaw!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
It is as absurd to deny that it is possible for a man always to love the same woman, as it would be to affirm that some famous musician needed several violins in order to execute a piece of music or compose a charming melody.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
This first entrance into life of two persons, during which a woman is encouraged by the hope of happiness, by the still fresh sentiment of her married duty, by the wish to please, by the sense of virtue which begins to be so attractive as soon as it shows love to be in harmony with duty, is called the honeymoon. How can it last long between two beings who are united for their whole life, unless they know each other perfectly? If there is one thing which ought to cause astonishment it is this, that the deplorable absurdities which our manners heap up around the nuptial couch give birth to so few hatreds! But that the life of the wise man is a calm current, and that of the prodigal a cataract; that the child, whose thoughtless hands have stripped the leaves from every rose upon his pathway, finds nothing but thorns on his return, that the man who in his wild youth has squandered a million, will never enjoy, during his life, the income of forty thousand francs, which this million would have provided—are trite commonplaces, if one thinks of the moral theory of life; but new discoveries, if we consider the conduct of most men. You may see here a true image of all honeymoons; this is their history, this is the plain fact and not the cause that underlies it.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
We do not attach ourselves permanently to any possessions, excepting in proportion to the trouble, toil and longing which they have cost us.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Talent in love, as in every other art, consists in the power of forming a conception combined with the power of carrying it out.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
What is Art, monsieur, but Nature concentrated?
HONORE DE BALZAC
Lost Illusions
God makes no mistake in His judgments, Madame; I recognize no tribunal but His.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
It is necessary for the full understanding of this history to explain how the natural discernment and spirit of analysis which old women bring to bear on the actions of others gave power to Mademoiselle Gamard, and what were the resources on her side. Accompanied by the taciturn Abbe Troubert she made a round of evening visits to five or six houses, at each of which she met a circle of a dozen or more persons, united by kindred tastes and the same general situation in life. Among them were one or two men who were influenced by the gossip and prejudices of their servants; five or six old maids who spent their time in sifting the words and scrutinizing the actions of their neighbours and others in the class below them; besides these, there were several old women who busied themselves in retailing scandal, keeping an exact account of each person’s fortune, striving to control or influence the actions of others, prognosticating marriages, and blaming the conduct of friends as sharply as that of enemies. These persons, spread about the town like the capillary fibres of a plant, sucked in, with the thirst of a leaf for the dew, the news and the secrets of each household, and transmitted them mechanically to the Abbe Troubert, as the leaves convey to the branch the moisture they absorb.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
In bringing God face to face with the Great Whole, we see that only two states are possible between them,—either God and Matter are contemporaneous, or God existed alone before Matter. Were Reason—the light that has guided the human race from the dawn of its existence—accumulated in one brain, even that mighty brain could not invent a third mode of being without suppressing both Matter and God.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
We will not attempt to enumerate the women who are virtuous from stupidity, for it is acknowledged that in love all women have intellect.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Unite a fine intelligence with a dwarfed intelligence and you precipitate a disaster; for it is necessary that equilibrium be preserved in everything.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
To speak of love is to make love.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
The music of the Opera enchants me; and whilst my soul is plunged in divine pleasure, I am the centre of admiration and the focus of all the opera-glasses. But a single glance will make the boldest youth drop his eyes.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Men may weary by their constancy, but women never.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Nature, that good and tender parent, has set round about the mother of a family the most reliable and the most sagacious of spies, the most truthful and at the same time the most discreet in the world. They are silent and yet they speak, they see everything and appear to see nothing.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
It is very easy to accuse a young person for suffering herself to be deceived, in the desire to escape, at any price, from the condition of girlhood; but such an accusation is only just in the present condition of our manners. At the present day, a young person knows nothing about seduction and its snares, she relies altogether upon her weakness, and mingling with this reliance the convenient maxims of the fashionable world, she takes as her guide while under the control of those desires which everything conspires to excite, her own deluding fancies, which prove a guide all the more treacherous, because a young girl rarely ever confides to another the secret thoughts of her first love.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
If you have desired your object only for one day, your love perhaps will not last more than three nights.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage