Quotes from Honore de Balzac

Yet, if you have a heart, lock it carefully away like a treasure; do not let any one suspect it, or you will be lost; you would cease to be the executioner, you would take the victim's place.

N'y a-t-il pas des pensées, des actions qui, en amour, équivalent, pour certaines âmes, à de saintes fiancailles!

Cuando la doctrina del ¿Que pagas? reemplace al ¿Que piensas? y pase a ser patrimonio del pueblo. ¿Que sera del país? pag179

But if the woman is young and pretty, if she enters a house in one of those streets, if the house has a long, dark, damp, and evil-smelling passage-way, at the end of which flickers the pallid gleam of an oil lamp, and if beneath that gleam appears the horrid face of a withered old woman with fleshless fingers, ah, then! and we say it in the interests of young and pretty women, that woman is lost. She is at the mercy of the first man of her acquaintance who sees her in that Parisian slough.

When a cloud comes between two beings filled with affection for each other and whose lives are in absolute unison, that cloud, though it may disperse, leaves in those souls a trace of its passage. Either love gains a stronger life, as the earth after rain, or the shock still echoes like distant thunder through a cloudless sky. It is impossible to recover absolutely the former life; love will either increase or diminish.

In love, a chance is faith's help to the women

Yes, it is time I was dead; there is nothing left me to do but to die. I am no good in the world; I am no longer a father!

Jeannette, the old cook, took care of the aged couple with blind devotion: she would have stolen the fruit to make their sweetmeats. Instead of taking her money to the savings-bank, she put it judiciously into lotteries, hoping that some day she could bestow a good round sum on her master and mistress

As a general rule, confidences are made to persons below one socially rather than to those above. Much more readily than we can employ our superiors in secret affairs, we make use of our inferiors, who consequently become

In spite of all this love-making, by the end of this year, as delightful as it was swift, Sommervieux felt one morning the need for resuming his work and his old habits. His wife was expecting their first child. He saw some friends again. During the tedious discomforts of the year when a young wife is nursing an infant for the first time, he worked, no doubt, with zeal, but he occasionally sought diversion in the fashionable world.

In short, your good points will become your faults, your faults will be vices, and your virtues crime.

Dear doctor," said the good priest, "you will soon comprehend the grandeur of religion and the value of its practices; you will find its philosophy in human aspects far higher than that of the boldest sceptics.

Aki azzal dicsekszik, hogy sohasem változtatja meg a véleményét, az úgy tesz, mintha arra vállalkozna, hogy mindig nyílegyenes vonalban fog haladni. Együgy? az ilyen, hisz a csalhatatlanságban. Márpedig nincsenek elvek, csak események vannak; nincsenek törvények, csak körülmények vannak.

That would be hard upon you; you will learn them by degrees. Never speak here of your misfortunes; they are slight compared to the catastrophes by which the lives of those you are now among were blasted.

Day after day the old man grew more conscious of the peace within him that succeeded all his conflicts. Having, as he said, God as the responsible editor of things inexplicable, his mind was at ease.

Il avait vu les trois grandes expressions de la société : l'obéissance, la Lutte et la Révolte; la Famille, le Monde et Vautrin. Et il n'osait prendre parti. L'Obéissance était ennuyeuse, la Révolte impossible, et la Lutte incertaine. Sa

it is God without mankind

Do what we will, women do not, and never will, possess the qualities which are characteristic of men, and these qualities are absolutely indispensable to family life.

Her beauty, which was really marvellous, came from extreme regularity of feature harmonizing with the proportions of the head and the body. This species of perfection augurs ill for the mind; and there are few exceptions to the rule. All superior nature is found to have certain slight imperfections of form which become irresistible attractions, luminous points from which shine vivid sentiments, and on which the eye rests gladly.

Marriage is not wholly made up of pleasures, — as fugitive in that relation as in all others; it involves compatibility of temper, physical sympathies, harmonies of character, which make of that social necessity an eternal problem. Marriageable daughters, as well as mothers, know the terms as well as the dangers of this lottery; and that is why women weep at a wedding while men smile; men believe that they risk nothing, while women know, or very nearly know, what they risk.

Perhaps as the story goes on, the reader will not regret having learned in advance a few particulars as to the home and the habitual companions of Modeste Mignon, for, at her age, people and things have as much influence upon the future life as a person's own character, — indeed, character often receives ineffaceable impressions from its surroundings.

Amit a moralisták az emberi szív mélységeinek neveznek, voltaképpen csalóka gondolatok, az egyéni érdek önkéntelen rezdülései. Ezek a lelki bonyodalmak, amelyekr?l annyi üres szó esik, ezek a hirtelen pálfordulások, nem egyebek élvezeteink javára végzett számításoknál.

opinions do not give talent, they always spoil what talent there is; and the poor fellow whom you have just seen is a proof thereof. An artist's opinion ought to be: Faith in his art, in his work; and his only way of success is toil when nature has given him the sacred fire.

L'amour est la poésie des sens.