French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
Great artists are beings who, to quote Napoleon, can cut off at will the connection which Nature has put between the senses and thought.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Thoughts of adultery do not take possession of the heart of a married woman all at once, like a shot from a pistol.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
The eyes of the good vicar never reached the optical range which enables men of the world to see and evade their neighbors' rough points. Before he could be brought to perceive the faults of his landlady he was forced to undergo the warning which Nature gives to all her creatures--pain.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
So, with the enthusiasm of one who attains an object long desired, with the candor of a child, and the blundering foolishness of an old man utterly without worldly experience, he fell into the life of Mademoiselle Gamard precisely as a fly is caught in a spider’s web.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
If a man strike his mistress it is a self-inflicted wound; but if he strike his wife it is suicide!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Man dies in despair while the Spirit dies in ecstasy.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
In one of the finest houses of the rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, at half-past eleven at night, two young women were sitting before the fireplace of a boudoir hung with blue velvet of that tender shade, with shimmering reflections, which French industry has lately learned to fabricate. Over the doors and windows were draped soft folds of blue cashmere, the tint of the hangings, the work of one of those upholsterers who have just missed being artists. A silver lamp studded with turquoise, and suspended by chains of beautiful workmanship, hung from the centre of the ceiling. The same system of decoration was followed in the smallest details, and even to the ceiling of fluted blue silk, with long bands of white cashmere falling at equal distances on the hangings, where they were caught back by ropes of pearl. A warm Belgian carpet, thick as turf, of a gray ground with blue posies, covered the floor. The furniture, of carved ebony, after a fine model of the old school, gave substance and richness to the rather too decorative quality, as a painter might call it, of the rest of the room. On either side of a large window, two etageres displayed a hundred precious trifles, flowers of mechanical art brought into bloom by the fire of thought. On a chimney-piece of slate-blue marble were figures in old Dresden, shepherds in bridal garb, with delicate bouquets in their hands, German fantasticalities surrounding a platinum clock, inlaid with arabesques. Above it sparkled the brilliant facets of a Venice mirror framed in ebony, with figures carved in relief, evidently obtained from some former royal residence. Two jardinieres were filled with the exotic product of a hot-house, pale, but divine flowers, the treasures of botany.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
In the provinces there is always a valve or a faucet through which gossip leaks from one social set to another.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Pierrette
A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
The inexorable box which keeps its mouth open to all comers receives its epistolary provender from all hands.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
The words fell as the axe of a skillful woodman falls at the root of a young tree and brings it down at a single blow.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
A good mind protects like a divinity; disenchantment is as keen-sighted as a surgeon; experience as foreseeing as a mother. Those three qualities are the cardinal virtues of a safe marriage.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Make another failure like that ... and you'll be immortal.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Wit is thought to be a quality rare in comedians. It is so natural to suppose that persons who spend their lives in showing things on the outside have nothing within.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
When she plays, an actress can live no life of her own; she can neither dress, nor eat, nor talk.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
What woman wants pity?... A man's sternness is to us our only pardon.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
How, alas! are we to explain, while respecting the honor of all the peoples, the problem which results from the fact that three millions of burning hearts can find no more than four hundred thousand women on which they can feed? Should we apportion four celibates for each woman and remember that the honest women would have already established, instinctively and unconsciously, a sort of understanding between themselves and the celibates, like that which the presidents of royal courts have initiated, in order to make their partisans in each chamber enter successively after a certain number of years?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
When two human beings are united by pleasure, all social conventionalities are put aside. This situation conceals a reef on which many vessels are wrecked. A husband is lost, if he once forgets there is a modesty which is quite independent of coverings. Conjugal love ought never either to put on or to take away the bandage of its eyes, excepting at the due season.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Vanity is only to be satisfied by gold in floods.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
In a moment he had poured out a thousand foolish words to her, with the rapidity of a torrent coursing between the rocks, and repeating the same sound in a thousand different forms.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes