HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES X

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: virtue


How hungry one's heart gets!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides


Seen from a distance, Raoul Nathan was a very fine meteor. Fashion accepted his ways and his appearance. His borrowed republicanism gave him, for the time being, that Jansenist harshness assumed by the defenders of the popular cause, while they inwardly scoff at it--a quality not without charm in the eyes of women.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: appearance


A husband should never let his wife visit her mother unattended.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


The man who enters his wife’s dressing-room is either a philosopher or an imbecile.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


Physical love is a craving like hunger, excepting that man eats all the time, and in love his appetite is neither so persistent nor so regular as at the table. A piece of bread and a carafe of water will satisfy the hunger of any man; but our civilization has brought to light the science of gastronomy. Love has its piece of bread, but it has also its science of loving, that science which we call coquetry, a delightful word which the French alone possess, for that science originated in this country.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: science


Time is their tyrant: it fails them, it escapes them; they can neither expand it nor cut it short.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Girl with the Golden Eyes


Civilization is come. It has shut up a million of men within an area of four square leagues; it has stalled them in streets, houses, apartments, rooms, and chambers eight feet square; after a time it will make them shut up one upon another like the tubes of a telescope.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: Men


By remaining unmarried, a creature of the female sex becomes void of meaning; selfish and cold, she creates repulsion.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: sex


Well, gold contains all things in embryo; gold realizes all things for us.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gobseck

Tags: gold


To seize adroitly upon the varieties of pleasure, to develop them, to impart to them a new style, an original expression, constitutes the genius of a husband.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: genius


Love, dear, is in my eyes the first principle of all the virtues, conformed to the divine likeness. Like all other first principles, it is not a matter of arithmetic; it is the Infinite in us.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: principles


Mothers with marriageable daughters ought to look out for men of this stamp, men with brains to act as protecting divinity, with worldly wisdom to diagnose like a surgeon, and with experience to take a mother's place in warding off evil.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: Men


In these times, liberty is no longer proscribed; it is going its rounds again.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: liberty


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

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


Oh! after ten years of marriage to find under his roof, and to see all the time, a young girl of from sixteen to eighteen, fresh, dressed with taste, the treasures of whose beauty seem to breathe defiance, whose frank bearing is irresistibly attractive, whose downcast eyes seem to fear you, whose timid glance tempts you, and for whom the conjugal bed has no secrets, for she is at once a virgin and an experienced woman! How can a man remain cold, like St. Anthony, before such powerful sorcery, and have the courage to remain faithful to the good principles represented by a scornful wife, whose face is always stern, whose manners are always snappish, and who frequently refuses to be caressed? What husband is stoical enough to resist such fires, such frosts? There, where you see a new harvest of pleasure, the young innocent sees an income, and your wife her liberty. It is a little family compact, which is signed in the interest of good will.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: beauty


To beat a retreat with the honors of war has always been the triumph of the ablest generals.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: war


Though all things in society as well as in the universe are said to have a purpose, there do exist here below certain beings whose purpose and utility seem inexplicable.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: purpose