HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES X

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.

HONORé DE BALZAC

attributed, And I Quote

Tags: 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


The caresses over which love presides are always pure.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


The exercise of thought, whatever people may say, is more noble than the exercise of bodily organs, and we give precedence to science over cookery and to intellectual training over hygiene.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: exercise


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: love


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


Before taking up the subject of modesty, it may perhaps be necessary to inquire whether there is such a thing. Is it anything in a woman but well understood coquetry?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: modesty


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Père Goriot

Tags: wealth


There are husbands, tall and of superior intellect, whose wives have lovers who are ugly, short, or stupid.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: lovers


Well, as for me, I admire literary people, but from a distance. I find them intolerable; in conversation they are despotic; I do not know what displeases me more, their faults or their good qualities. In short (he swallows his chestnut), people of genius are like tonics—you like, but you must use them temperately.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: conversation


You are a woman, and you can certainly win a priest to your interests.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours


A few observations upon the soul of Paris may explain the causes of its cadaverous physiognomy, which has but two ages—youth and decay: youth, wan and colorless; decay, painted to seem young.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Girl with the Golden Eyes

Tags: Paris


A man may be put to death by a thought.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: death


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

HONORE DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: marriage


Between the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady’s window.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Romans et contes philosophiques

Tags: gambling


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


The good man signed the papers with the innocence of a child who does what his mother orders without question.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: innocence


The Italian school has lost sight of the high mission of art. Instead of elevating the crowd, it has condescended to the crowd; it has won its success only by accepting the suffrages of all comers, and appealing to the vulgar minds which constitute the majority. Such a success is mere street juggling.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: success


The Spirit of Love has acquired strength, the result of all vanquished terrestrial passions.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: love


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