HONORÉ DE BALZAC QUOTES XIX

French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)

Then, let every one question his conscience on this point, and search his memory if he has ever met a man who confined himself to the love of one woman only!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: conscience


To write a letter, and to have it posted; to get an answer, to read it and burn it; there we have correspondence stated in the simplest terms.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


Tone is light in another shape. In music, instruments perform the functions of the colors employed in painting.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara

Tags: light


When a human soul draws its first furrow straight, the rest will follow surely.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: soul


Wisdom is the understanding of celestial things to which the Spirit is brought by Love.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: love


Your wife ought to drink water, lightly tinged with a Burgundy wine agreeable to her taste, but destitute of any tonic properties; every other kind of wine would be bad for her. Never allow her to drink water alone; if you do, you are lost...

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: wine


A lover has all the good points and all the bad points which are lacking in a husband.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage


A married woman, then, in France presents the spectacle of a queen out at service, of a slave, at once free and a prisoner.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: France


How mad a man must appear when desire renders him alternately angry and tender, insolent and abject, biting as an epigram and soothing as a madrigal!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: desire


I went to bed sorrowful, and I still suffer from the shock produced by this first collision of my frank, joyous nature with the harsh laws of society. Already the highway hedges are flecked with my white wool!

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: nature


If a man would have the right to make stepping-stones of all the heads which crowd a drawing-room, he must be the lover of some artistic woman of fashion.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: fashion


If many man fail to be masters in their own house this is not from lack of willingness, but of talent. As for those who are ready to undergo the toils of this terrible duel, it is quite true that they must needs possess great moral force.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: talent


If we study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment -- giving to that word its exact significance. Man does not create forces; he employs the only force that exists and which includes all others, namely Motion, the breath incomprehensible of the sovereign Maker of the universe.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Seraphita

Tags: giving


If you have desired your object only for one day, your love perhaps will not last more than three nights.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


In the terrific tumult of raving passions, the holy Voice would have been unheard.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Gambara


Love is the most melodious of all harmonies.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: love


People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Modeste Mignon

Tags: happiness


Squeeze marriage as much as you like, you will never extract anything from it but fun for bachelors and boredom for husbands.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: boredom


There are those whose character is like a chestnut without a kernel.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: character


There is no good fete without a morrow.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve