Quotes from Honore de Balzac

Strong in the experience of her twenty years, she blamed fate, because, not knowing that the mainspring of happiness is in ourselves, she demanded it of the circumstances of life.

Ah! Lord God in heaven! how ill Thy world is ordered! Thou hast a Son, if what they tell us is true, and yet Thou leavest us to suffer so through our children.

Remain a bachelor for the next thirteen years; amuse yourself like a lost soul; then, at forty, on your first attack of gout, marry a widow of thirty-six. Then you may possibly be happy. If you now take a young girl to wife, you'll die a madman.

Mother and daughter looked at one another as if Pons were speaking Chinese. No one can imagine how ignorant and exclusive Parisians are; they only learn what they are taught, and that only when they choose.

Corruption is thick on the ground, talent rare.

Femeia are comun cu îngerii faptul c? cei care sufer? îi apar?in.

Cuando uno busca algo en el cielo, debe apuntar hacia Dios.» Estas

Félicité knew neither father nor mother, and was her own mistress from childhood. . . . Chance thrust her into the fields of science and the imagination and the world of literature, instead of loaving her in the small, tight circle of frivolous education traced for women - a mother's instruction in how to dress, in the hypocritical proprieties of society, in the arts of hunting a man.

HONORINE BEATRIX

Wife," said the little tailor, "it's ill counting on dead men's shoes.

Their well-prepared passion had finally reached maturity through that which tends to deaden passions: gratification.

A mother who does not know all that her son is doing thinks the worst; that is, if a mother loves as much and is as much beloved as Fanny.

He believed neither in the antecedent animal nor the surviving spirit of man. Desplein had no doubts; he was positive. His bold and unqualified atheism was like that of many scientific men, the best men in the world, but invincible atheists — atheists such as religious people declare to be impossible.

The most perennial and the best materialized of human ideas, the idea by which man reproduces himself by creating outside of himself the fictitious being called Property, that mental demon, drove its steel claws perpetually into his heart.

I did not know that bureaucracy could send its claws into our very coffins

Calm and smiling faces and placid brows covered sordid interests, expressions of friendship were a lie, and more than one man was less distrustful of his enemies than of his friends.

Nuestra felicidad, amigo mío, tendrá siempre cabida entre la planta de nuestros pies y nuestro occipucio; y tanto si cuesta un millón al año como cien luises, la percepción intrínseca es la misma en el interior de nosotros. –Gracias;

Old Claparon is dead, and his son, who has become a banker, has ordered the cheapest kind of funeral for him. That fellow has no education; they wouldn't behave like that in China.

I should immensely like to know what is the potent charm wielded by society to keep people prisoner from nine every evening till two or three in the morning, and force them to be so lavish alike of strength and money. When I longed for it, I had no idea of the separations it brought about, or its overmastering spell. But, then, I forget, it is Paris which does it all.

Avarice, like love, has the gift of second sight, instinctively guessing at future contingencies, and hugging its presentiments.

Quién decidirá lo que es más horrible: corazones resecos o cráneos vacíos? La

The time during which a woman can look for admiration is short, it will soon be past; and if my life has not been a great one, it will at least have been calm, tranquil, free from shocks. Nature has favored our sex in giving us a choice between love and motherhood. I have made mine. My children shall be my gods, and this spot of earth my Eldorado.

There is still a way to harmonize all interests," said Solonet, uttering this sentence in a high falsetto tone, which silenced the other three and drew their eyes and their attention upon himself. This young man was not unlike a skilful coachman who holds the reins of four horses, and amuses himself by first exciting his animals and then subduing them.

Les actrices payent aussi les éloges, mais les plus habiles payent les critiques, le silence est ce qu'elles redoutent le plus. Aussi une critique, faite pour être rétorquée ailleurs, vaut-elle mieux et se paye-t-elle plus cher qu'un éloge tout sec, oublié le lendemain. La polémique, mon cher, est le piédestal des célébrités. A