HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES XVIII

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

Between two beings susceptible of love, the duration of passion is in proportion to the original resistance of the woman, or to the obstacles which the accidents of social life put in the way of your happiness.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: happiness


If love is a child, passion is a man.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


Clouds signify the veil of the Most High.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita


Thus your invisible moral universe and your visible physical universe are one and the same matter. We will not separate properties from substances, nor objects from effects. All that exists, all that presses upon us and overwhelms us from above or from below, before us or in us, all that which our eyes and our minds perceive, all these named and unnamed things compose—in order to fit the problem of Creation to the measure of your logic—a block of finite Matter; but were it infinite, God would still not be its master.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: universe


Therefore Prayer, issuing from so many trials, is the consummation of all truths, all powers, all feelings.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: prayer


All human power is a compound of time and patience.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Eugénie Grandet

Tags: power


Here, the hearers receiving a musical impression do not work it out in themselves, as religion bids us work out the texts of Scripture in prayer. Hence it is very difficult to make them understand that there is in nature an eternal melody, exquisitely sweet, a perfect harmony, disturbed only by revolutions independent of the divine will, as passions are uncontrolled by the will of men.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: work


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


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


Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: courtesy


Raise those great black eyes of yours, fixed on my opening sentence, and keep this excitement for the letter which shall tell you of my first love. By the way, why always "first?" Is there, I wonder, a second love?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: love


I have already seen hundreds of men, young and middle-aged; not one has stirred the least feeling in me. No proof of admiration and devotion on their part, not even a sword drawn in my behalf, would have moved me. Love, dear, is the product of such rare conditions that it is quite possible to live a lifetime without coming across the being on whom nature has bestowed the power of making one's happiness. The thought is enough to make one shudder; for if this being is found too late, what then?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: admiration


People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Modeste Mignon

Tags: happiness


The woman who allows herself to be found out deserves her fate.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: fate


The virtue of women is perhaps a question of temperament.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: question


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

Tags: wine


If a man would have the right to make stepping-stones of all the heads which crowd a drawing-room, he must be the lover of some artistic woman of fashion.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: fashion


We regard it as an infallible principle that great sweetness of disposition united in a woman with plainness that is not repulsive, form two indubitable elements of success in securing the greatest possible happiness to the home.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: happiness


So thorough an old maid as Sylvie was certain to make good progress in the way of salvation.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Pierrette

Tags: progress