HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES XIV

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

Who would not at the present moment wish to retain the persuasion that wives are virtuous? Are they not the supreme flower of the country? Are they not all blooming creatures, fascinating the world by their beauty, their youth, their life and their love? To believe in their virtue is a sort of social religion, for they are the ornament of the world, and form the chief glory of France.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: beauty


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

Tags: adultery


You, you sybarites, canting bigots, vagabonds, hypocrites, sneaks, cudgellers, bucks, pilgrims, and such like, who are disguised as masqueraders to cheat the world! .... to heel, hounds; get out of the way! Away, pudden-heads! What, are you still there, in the devil's name?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


Hunger is not so violent as love; but the caprices of the soul are more numerous, more bewitching, more exquisite in their intensity than the caprices of gastronomy; but all that the poets and the experiences of our own life have revealed to us on the subject of love, arms us celibates with a terrible power: we are the lion of the Gospel seeking whom we may devour.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: life


The men of science who spend whole months in gnawing at the bone of an antediluvian monster, in calculating the laws of nature, when there is an opportunity to peer into her secrets, the Grecians and Latinists who dine on a thought of Tacitus, sup on a phrase of Thucydides, spend their life in brushing the dust from library shelves, in keeping guard over a commonplace book, or a papyrus, are all predestined. So great is their abstraction or their ecstasy, that nothing that goes on around them strikes their attention. Their unhappiness is consummated; in full light of noon they scarcely even perceive it. Oh happy men! a thousand times happy! Example: Beauzee, returning home after session at the Academy, surprises his wife with a German. "Did not I tell you, madame, that it was necessary that I shall go," cried the stranger. "My dear sir," interrupted the academician, "you ought to say that I should go!"

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: Men


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

Tags: suicide


Now it is impossible for a woman who is perpetually at war with herself and living in contradiction to her true life, to leave others in peace or refrain from envying their happiness.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: happiness


Certain women of a lymphatic temperament will pretend to have the spleen and will even feign death, if they can only gain thereby the benefit of a secret divorce.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: death


O headache, protectress of love, tariff of married life, buckler against which all married desires expire! O mighty headache! Can it be possible that lovers have never sung thy praises, personified thee, or raised thee to the skies? O magic headache, O delusive headache, blest be the brain that first invented thee! Shame on the doctor who shall find out thy preventive! Yes, thou art the only ill that women bless, doubtless through gratitude for the good things thou dispensest to them, O deceitful headache!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: art


However portentous a fact may be, or even supernatural--if such facts exist--however solemnly a miracle may be done in sight of all, the lightning of that fact, the thunderbolt of that miracle is quickly swallowed up in the ocean of life, whose surface, scarcely stirred by the brief convulsion, returns to the level of its habitual flow.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: miracle


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

Tags: flowers


In the matter of repartees literary celebrities are often not as quick as women.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: women


Women will not suffer their idol to step down from his pedestal. They do not forgive the slightest pettiness in a god.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: God


Silliness has two ways of comporting itself; it talks, or is silent. Silent silliness can be borne.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Pierrette


True, I have my weak points; but were I a man, I should adore them. They arise from what is most promising in me.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides


What a thing of fantasy a woman may become after dusk.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Ferragus

Tags: fantasy


I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Letter to Zulma Carraud, July 2, 1832

Tags: writing


There are husbands, tall and of superior intellect, whose wives have lovers who are ugly, short, or stupid.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: lovers


A few observations upon the soul of Paris may explain the causes of its cadaverous physiognomy, which has but two ages—youth and decay: youth, wan and colorless; decay, painted to seem young.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Girl with the Golden Eyes

Tags: Paris


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

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage