Quotes from Honore de Balzac

Once more she urged me not to be dazzled by the glitter of society, to be always on my guard, especially against what most attracted me. This is the sum-total of her wisdom, and I can get nothing more out of her.

Ah! darling, my life unrolls itself before my eyes like one of the great highways of France, level and easy, shaded with evergreen trees. This century will not see another Bonaparte; and my children, if I have any, will not be rent from me. They will be mine to train and make men of — the joy of my life.

a true Provencal version of the Harlowe family.

She put all her pride and self-love into making him superior to herself, and not in ruling him. Hearts without tenderness covet dominion, but a true love treasures abnegation, that virtue of strength.

When his opponent, after careful conversation, avowed the secret of his own purposes, confident that he had secured his listener's assent, Grandet answered: "I can decide nothing without consulting my wife." His wife, whom he had reduced to a state of helpless slavery, was a useful screen to him in business.

O problema da indumentária é aliás enorme para aqueles que desejam aparentar o que não têm, porque é quase sempre o melhor meio de vir a possuí-lo mais tarde.

Could the Comte de Vandenesse have seen himself, three years later, the brother-in-law of a Sieur Ferdinand DU Tillet, so-called, he might not have married his wife; but what man of rank in 1828 foresaw the strange upheavals which the year 1830 was destined to produce in the political condition, the fortunes, and the customs of France?

Principles are the pivot on which the hands of the political barometer turn." There was an instant shout of laughter.

Dragostea realizeaz? un progres enorm la o femeie în clipa când ea î?i închipuie c? a procedat prea pu?in generos sau c? a rânit un suflet delicat.

I know neither whence nor from whom it will arise; but one need be no prophet to foretell that the mere weight of a boundless happiness will overpower you. Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.

At the same time the wretched rooms rose before him, denuded of the poetry of love which beautifies everything; he saw them dirty and faded, regarding them as emblematic of an inner life devoid of honor, idle and vicious. Are not our feelings written, as it were, on the things about us?

In these days rich families stand between the danger of impoverishing their children if they have too many, or of extinguishing their names if they have too few, — a singular result of the Code which Napoleon never thought of.

No hay que haberlo experimentado todo para poder expresarlo todo? Y sentir vivamente, ¿no es sufrir? Por consiguiente, las poesías no se crean sino tras penosos viajes que se emprenden a las vastas regiones del pensamiento y de la sociedad.

Quand son fils devint grand, il le mena chasser pour qu'il contractât cette sauvagerie de langage, cette rudesse de manières, cette force de corps, cette virilité dans le regard et dans la voix qui rendaient à ses yeux un homme accompli." Cité par Lucile Peytavin dans Le coût de la virilité

Úgy látszik, az emberi természetben gyökerezik, hogy mindent elszenvedtetünk azzal, aki kész mindent elszenvedni igazi alázatosságból, gyengeségb?l vagy közönyb?l. Avagy nem szeretjük-e mindnyájan kipróbálni er?nket valakinek vagy valaminek a kárára?

to the sense of coming events and mysterious felicity and fear at hand, while as yet there is no substance of fact on which these phantoms of caprice can fix and feed? Over these fancies thought hovers, conceiving impossible projects, giving in the germ all the joys of love. Perhaps, indeed, all passion is contained in that thought-germ, as the beauty, and fragrance, and rich color of the flower is all packed in the seed.

Life is a garment; when it is dirty, we must brush it; when it is ragged, it must be patched; but we keep it on as long as we can.

My dear fellow, those women of whom you say, 'They are angels!' I — I — have seen stripped of the little grimaces under which they hide their soul, as well as of the frippery under which they disguise their defects — without manners and without stays; they are not beautiful.

The thoughts into which our spirit is suddenly plunged are like a shoreless sea, in which we may swim for a moment, but where our love is doomed to drown and die. And it is a frightful death. Are not our feelings the most glorious part of our life? It is this partial death which, in certain delicate or powerful natures, leads to the terrible ruin produced by disenchantment, by hopes and passions betrayed.

Sempre que uma mulher chega a se arrepender de suas fraquezas, passa uma esponja sobre a sua vida, a fim de tudo apagar.

The great lawyer, the clear-sighted criminal judge, whose superiority seemed to his colleagues a form of aberration, had for five years been watching legal results without seeing their causes. As he scrambled up into the lofts, as he saw the poverty, as he studied the desperate necessities which gradually bring the poor to criminal acts, as he estimated their long struggles, compassion filled his soul.

My father used to say that one of the great offences of sham politeness was the neglect of promises. When anything is demanded of you that you cannot do, refuse positively and leave no loopholes for false hopes; on the other hand, grant at once whatever you are willing to bestow.

No one has understood this opium of poverty. The lottery, all-powerful fairy of the poor, bestowed the gift of magic hopes. The turn of the wheel which opens to the gambler a vista of gold and happiness, lasts no longer than a flash of lightning, but the lottery gave five days' existence to that magnificent flash. What social power can to-day, for the sum of five sous, give us five days' happiness and launch us ideally into all the joys of civilization?

Well, then! there are streets, or ends of streets, there are houses, unknown for the most part to persons of social distinction, to which a woman of that class cannot go without causing cruel and very wounding things to be thought of her. Whether the woman be rich and has a carriage, whether she is on foot, or is disguised, if she enters one of these Parisian defiles at any hour of the day, she compromises her reputation as a virtuous woman.