French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
Mankind are not perfect, but one age is more or less hypocritical than another, and then simpletons say that its morality is high or low.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
By dint of taking interest in everything, the Parisian ends by being interested in nothing. No emotion dominating his face, which friction has rubbed away, it turns gray like the faces of those houses upon which all kinds of dust and smoke have blown. In effect, the Parisian, with his indifference on the day for what the morrow will bring forth, lives like a child, whatever may be his age. He grumbles at everything, consoles himself for everything, jests at everything, forgets, desires, and tastes everything, seizes all with passion, quits all with indifference—his kings, his conquests, his glory, his idols of bronze or glass—as he throws away his stockings, his hats, and his fortune.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
To be jealous is to exhibit, at once, the height of egotism, the error of amour-propre, the vexation of morbid vanity. Women rather encourage this ridiculous feeling, because by means of it they can obtain cashmere shawls, silver toilet sets, diamonds, which for them mark the high thermometer mark of their power. Moreover, unless you appear blinded by jealousy, your wife will not keep on her guard; for there is no pitfall which she does not distrust, excepting that which she makes for herself.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Life -- is it anything more than a machine to which money imparts the motion?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of most social matters.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Pierrette
Two enemies sometimes possess a power of clear insight into mental processes, and read each other's minds as two lovers read in either soul.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
In every case we receive only in proportion to what we give.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
As ideas are capable of infinite combination, it ought to be the same with pleasures.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
There are men so situated in life that they can never enter the brilliant sphere in which honest women move, whether for want of a coat, or from their bashfulness, or from the failure of a mahout to introduce them.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.
HONORE DE BALZAC
A Woman of Thirty
A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
Do not therefore allow yourself to be led astray by the specious good nature of such an institution as that of twin beds. It is the silliest, the most treacherous, the most dangerous in the world. Shame and anathema to him who conceived it!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
None but fools and invalids can find pleasure in shuffling cards all evening long to find out whether they shall win a few pence at the end.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
What sentiment of admiration must rise in the soul of a philosopher on discovering that there is, perhaps, but one single principle in the world, as there is but one God; and that our ideas and our affections are subject to the same laws which cause the sun to rise, the flowers to bloom, the universe to teem with life!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Seraphita
Everywhere you find the man of thews and sinews who toils, and the lymphatic man who torments himself; and pleasures are everywhere the same, for when all sensations are exhausted, all that survives is Vanity—Vanity is the abiding substance of us, the I in us.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
The colonel and the lawyer, delighted to lay hands on a fool whose money would be useful to their schemes, and who might himself, in certain cases, be made to bell the cat, while his house would serve as a meeting-ground for the scattered elements of the party, made the most of the Rogrons’ ill-will against the upper classes of the place. The three had already a slight tie in their united subscription to the "Constitutionnel"; it would certainly not be difficult for the colonel to make a Liberal of the ex-mercer, though Rogron knew so little of politics that he was capable of regarding the exploits of Sergeant Mercier as those of a brother shopkeeper.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Pierrette
Persons without minds are like weeds that delight in good earth; they want to be amused by others, all the more because they are dull within.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
The Countess sat playing with her children. When she heard my name, she sprang up and came to meet me, then she sat down and pointed without a word to a chair by the fire. Her face wore the inscrutable mask beneath which women of the world conceal their most vehement emotions. Trouble had withered that face already. Nothing of its beauty now remained, save the marvelous outlines in which its principal charm had lain.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck