Quotes from Honore de Balzac

The town produces somewhat the same effect upon the mind as a sleeping-draught upon the body. It is silent as Venice.

Votre cousin est mignon, mignon, mais vraiment mignon.

Can you suppose that the incidents of your married life are without interest for me? I muse at times over all that you have said to me. Often when, at the Opera, I seem absorbed in watching the pirouetting dancers, I am saying to myself, "It is half-past nine, perhaps she is in bed. What is she about? Is she happy? Is she alone with her independence? or has her independence gone the way of other dead and castoff independences?

O amor toma a cor do século a que pertence. Em 1822 é doutrinário. Em lugar de se provar o amor como antigamente por meio de factos, discute-se, transformam-no num discurso de tribuna.

Vous pouvez renvoyer par la diligence ma toilette ? l'hôtel d'Aubrion, rue Hillerin-Bertin. --Par la diligence! dit Eugénie. Une chose pour laquelle j'aurais donné mille fois ma vie!

Every compartment in his brain which he had thought to find so full of wit was bolted fast; he grew positively stupid.

Epochs put their mark on men. These two individuals proved the truth of that axiom by the opposing historic tints that were visible in their faces, in their conversation, in their ideas, and in their clothes.

Both eyes had cataracts; but she obstinately refused to submit to an operation, in spite of the entreaties of her sister-in-law. The secret reason of that obstinacy was known to herself only; she declared it was want of courage; but the truth was that she would not let her brother spend twenty-five louis for her benefit. That sum would have been so much the less for the good of the household.

In short, there is no illusory grace left to the poverty that reigns here; it is dire, parsimonious, concentrated, threadbare poverty; as yet it has not sunk into the mire, it is only splashed by it, and though not in rags as yet, its clothing is ready to drop to pieces.

His life flowed soundless as the sands of an hour-glass. His victims sometimes flew into a rage and made a great deal of noise, followed by a great silence; so is it in a kitchen after a fowl's neck has been wrung.

Once a thing is nothing more than what it is, it's too useful to serve the cause of luxury.

I need not warn you to be discreet; that is the first virtue of any man who hopes to hold public appointments.

Consequently she watched him with all her eyes, all her mind; and by giving herself up to hopes that were sometimes flourishing, sometimes blighted, she had brought the matter to such enormous proportions that she saw all things in a mental mirage. To use a common but excellent expression, by dint of looking intently she saw nothing.

You don't know, my dear minister, all that can be made in the provinces of a judicial affair when adroitly manipulated, — cooked, as I may say. In my long and laborious career at the bar I saw plenty of that kind of miracle. But a parliamentary debate is another thing. In that there's no need of proof; one can kill one's man with probabilities and assertions, if hotly maintained.

Chesnel was clear-sighted so long as Victurnien was not there before him. One by one he lost the illusions which the Marquis and his sister still fondly cherished. He saw that the young fellow could not be depended upon in the least, and wished to see him married to some modest, sensible girl of good birth, wondering within himself how a young man could mean so well and do so ill, for he made promises one day only to break them all on the next.

A force de s'intéresser à tout, le Parisien finit par ne s'intéresser à rien.

N'est-il pas dans la noble destinée de la femme d'être plus touchée des pompes de la misère que des splendeurs de la fortune ?

Women feel that when their power is greatest, they look their best, and that those are their happiest hours; they like power in men, and prefer the strongest even if it is a power that may be their own destruction. I am going to make an inventory of your desires in order to put the question at issue before you.

Like evil, good is contagious. Therefore when Madame de la Chanterie's lodger had lived in that old and silent house for some months after the worthy Alain's last confidence, which gave him the deepest respect for the religious lives of those among whom his was cast, he experienced that well-being of the soul which comes of a regulated existence, gentle customs, and harmony of nature in those who surround us.

Do you believe that there is any absolute standard in this world? Despise mankind and find out the meshes that you can slip through in the net of the Code. The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed.

Die Elsässerin, die man mir zur Frau vorgeschlagen hat, hat sechs Zehen am linken Fuß: ich kann mit keiner Frau leben, die sechs Zehen hat! Das spräche sich herum, und ich wäre lächerlich. Sie hat nur 18000 Francs Rente! zuwenig Geld und zuviel Zehen!

Once every woman was a living gazette, a font of delicious slanders cast in beautiful language.

Opinions are caught like infection, and put into practice without examination.

Life gives us but one friend,