HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES XVIII

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

All human power is a compound of time and patience.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Eugénie Grandet

Tags: power


A woman's life begins with her first passion.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: life


A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: life


Thought alone holds the tradition of the bygone life. The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source of human genius.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: genius


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


Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.

HONORE DE BALZAC

attributed, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources

Tags: misfortune


One thought borne inward, one prayer uplifted, one suffering endured, one echo of the Word within us, and our souls are forever changed.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: prayer


Now, among the petty miseries of human life the one for which the worthy priest felt the deepest aversion was the sudden sprinkling of his shoes, adorned with silver buckles, and the wetting of their soles.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: life


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

Tags: soul


Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Le Siècle

Tags: kindness


In the terrific tumult of raving passions, the holy Voice would have been unheard.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara


I went to bed sorrowful, and I still suffer from the shock produced by this first collision of my frank, joyous nature with the harsh laws of society. Already the highway hedges are flecked with my white wool!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: nature


I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letter to Zulma Carraud, July 2, 1832

Tags: writing


He who is to win my heart, my dear, must be harsh and unbending with men, but gentle with women. His eagle eye must have power to quell with a single glance the least approach to ridicule. He will have a pitying smile for those who would jeer at sacred things, above all, at that poetry of the heart, without which life would be but a dreary commonplace. I have the greatest scorn for those who would rob us of the living fountain of religious beliefs, so rich in solace. His faith, therefore, should have the simplicity of a child, though united to the firm conviction of an intelligent man, who has examined the foundations of his creed. His fresh and original way of looking at things must be entirely free from affectation or desire to show off. His words will be few and fit, and his mind so richly stored, that he cannot possibly become a bore to himself any more than to others.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: conviction


Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: courtesy


An honest woman is necessarily a married woman.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


A wife is to her husband just what her husband has made her.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


A society of atheists would immediately invent a religion.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Le catechisme social

Tags: atheism


A husband will be best avenged by his wife's lover.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


When a human soul draws its first furrow straight, the rest will follow surely.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: soul