French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
In every case we receive only in proportion to what we give.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Life -- is it anything more than a machine to which money imparts the motion?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
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
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
The King stands for us all. To die for the King is to die for oneself, for one's family, which, like the kingdom, cannot die.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
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
What a wretched dramatist Shakespeare is! Othello is in love with glory; he wins battles, he gives orders, he struts about and is all over the place while Desdemona sits at home; and Desdemona, who sees herself neglected for the silly fuss of public life, is quite meek all the time. Such a sheep deserves to be slaughtered.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
As ideas are capable of infinite combination, it ought to be the same with pleasures.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
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
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
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
A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
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
Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Seraphita
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
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
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
Discretion is the best form of calculation.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes