HdHonoré de Balzac

68 collected words

Honoré de Balzac

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

No one ought even to desert a woman after throwing her a heap of gold in her distress! He ought to love her forever! You are young, only twenty-one, and kind and upright and fine. You'll ask me how a woman can take money from a man. Oh, God, isn't it natural to share everything with the one we owe all our happiness to? When one has given everything, how can one quibble about a mere portion of it? Money is important only when feeling has ceased. Isn't one bound for life? How can you foresee separation when you think someone loves you? When a man swears eternal love--how can there be any separate concerns in that case?

Honoré de Balzac / quote

02Undated

Have you ever plunged into the immensity of space and time by reading the geological treatises of Cuvier? Borne away on the wings of his genius, have you hovered over the illimitable abyss of the past as if a magician's hand were holding you aloft? As one penetrates from seam to seam, from stratum to stratum and discovers, under the quarries of Montmartre or in the schists of the Urals, those animals whose fossilized remains belong to antediluvian civilizations, the mind is startled to catch a vista of the milliards of years and the millions of peoples which the feeble memory of man and an indestructible divine tradition have forgotten and whose ashes heaped on the surface of our globe, form the two feet of earth which furnish us with bread and flowers. Is not Cuvier the greatest poet of our century? Certainly Lord Byron has expressed in words some aspects of spiritual turmoil; but our immortal natural historian has reconstructed worlds from bleached bones.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

03Undated

The viscountess had raised the forefinger of her right hand and made a pretty gesture toward a stool at her feet. There was such intense tyrannical passion in the gesture that the marquis relinquished the doorknob and came back.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

04Undated

Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

05Undated

Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

06Undated

Journalism, look you, is the religion of modern society.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

07Undated

It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

08Undated

What moralists describe as the mysteries of the human heart are solely the deceiving thoughts, the spontaneous impulses of self-regard. The sudden changes in character, about which so much has been said, are instinctive calculations for the furtherance of our own pleasures. Seeing himself now in his fine clothes, his new gloves and shoes, Eugène de Rastignac forgot his noble resolve. Youth, when it swerves toward wrong, dares not look in the mirror of conscience; maturity has already seen itself there. That is the whole difference between the two phases of life.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

09Undated

Doing his utmost, deploying all his energy, a young man setting out from zero can wind up after ten years somewhere below where he started.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

10Undated

Was she acting entirely consciously? No: women are always sincere, even in the midst of their most shocking duplicities, because it is always some natural emotion which dominates them. Perhaps, having given this young man such a hold on her, by having openly demonstrated her affection for him, Delphine was merely responding to a sense of personal dignity, which led her either to revoke any concessions she might have made or, at least, to enjoy suspending them. Even at the very moment when passion seizes her, it is perfectly natural for a Parisian woman to delay her final fall, as a way of testing the heart of the man into whose hands she is about to deliver herself and her future!

Honoré de Balzac / quote

11Undated

He looked like some plant bleached by darkness.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

12Undated

Happy?" asked Aquilina, with dreadful look, and a smile full of pity and terror. "Ah, you do not know what it is to be condemned to a life of pleasure.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

13Undated

How did you get back?' asked Vautrin. 'I walked,' replied Eugene.'I wouldn't like half-pleasures, myself,' observed the tempter. 'I'd want to go there in my own carriage, have my own box, and come back in comfort. All or nothing, that's my motto.''And a very good one,' said Madame Vauquer.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

14Undated

Is there any instinct more deeply implanted in the heart of man than the pride of protection, a protection which is constantly exerted for a fragile and defenceless creature?

Honoré de Balzac / quote

15Undated

Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

16Undated

Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

17Undated

Lucien took the cigar and lit it, in the Spanish fashion, from that of the priest. "He is right," Lucien thought; "there is plenty of time to kill myself.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

18Undated

For avarice begins where poverty ends.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

19Undated

The human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the steep, downward slope of hatred.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

20Undated

Man cannot spend all his time doing evil, and even in the company of pirates there must be some sweet moments on their sinister ship when you feel as if you were aboard a pleasure yacht.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

21Undated

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

22Undated

Man can start with aversion and end with love, but if he begins with love and comes round to aversion he will never get back to love.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

23Undated

Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch.

Honoré de Balzac / quote

24Undated

In Paris, when certain people see you ready to set your foot in the stirrup, some pull your coat-tails, others loosen the buckle of the strap that you may fall and crack your skull; one wrenches off your horse's shoes, another steals your whip, and the least treacherous of them all is the man whom you see coming to fire his pistol at you point blank.

Honoré de Balzac / quote