Quotes from Honore de Balzac

Today, talent needs the kind of luck that favors the incompetent; in fact, if a skilled man rejects the vile arrangements that bring success to rampant mediocrity, he will never get on at all.

Is not the forehead the most prophetic feature of a man?

Man sieht, daß sich in allen Schichten der Gesellschaft die Bräuche gleichen und nur in der Art, dem Äußerlichen und der Nuance verschieden sind. Auch die große Gesellschaft hat ihr Rotwelsch; aber dieses Rotwelsch heißt ›der Stil‹.

To Sofka "Have you observed, mademoiselle, that the painters and sculptors of the Middle Ages, when they placed two figures in adoration, one on each side of a fair Saint, never failed to give them a family likeness? When you here see your name among those that are dear to me, and under whose auspices I place my works, remember that touching harmony, and you will see in this not so much an act of homage as an expression of the brotherly affection of your devoted servant, "DE BALZAC.

Has he forgotten her? That's the solitary thought which echoes through my soul like a remorse. Ah! dear mamma, have all women to struggle against memories as I do? None but innocent young men should be married to pure young girls. But that's a deceptive Utopia; better have one's rival in the past than in the future.

There is no amusement except in the lumbering diligences of France, that gabbling and indiscreet country, where every one is in a hurry to laugh and show his wit, and where jest and epigram enliven all things, even the poverty of the lower classes and the weightier cares of the solid bourgeois. In a coach there is no police to check tongues, and legislative assemblies have set the fashion of public discussion.

Déjeme respirar el aire del anochecer, oír el croar de las ranas, admirar los rayos de la luna que cabrillean en las aguas; déjeme que me detenga en esta naturaleza, donde creo ver mi felicidad escrita en cada cosa y que se me aparece por vez primera en todo su esplendor, iluminada por el amor, embellecida por usted.

Tout pouvoir humain est un composé de patience et de temps.

His garden and his study were full of the rarest plants, but he always bought them half-withered. Perhaps it pleased him to see such an image of his own fate! He was faded like these dying flowers, whose almost decaying fragrance mounted strangely to his brain.

The physician strains towards good as an artist towards beauty, each impelled by that grand sentiment which we call virtue.

Ale rozum jest zawsze czym? mizernym wobec uczucia; jest ograniczony jak wszystko, co pozytywne; uczucie jest bez kresu. Rozumowa? tam, gdzie trzeba uczu?, to w?a?ciwo?? ma?ych dusz. Vandenesse

Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.

For the little season that a woman's beauty is in flower it serves her admirably well in the dissimulation to which her natural weakness and our social laws condemn her.

The poor man's heart was big with affections seeking an object; he had never been loved but by a poodle that had died some time since, of which he would talk to me, asking whether I thought the Church would allow masses to be said for the repose of its soul. His dog, said he, had been a good Christian, who for twelve years had accompanied him to church, never barking, listening to the organ without opening his mouth,

The hat, above all, struck me; it is a sort of truncated column, and does not adapt itself in the least to the shape of the head; but I am told it is easier to bring about a revolution than to invent a graceful hat.

Alaca??m hiçbir ?ey kalmas?n diye vermem gerekenden fazlas?n? verdim ve bunun için ?imdiden cezaland?r?ld?m.

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." In L'enfant maudit Cité par Lucile Peytavin dans Le coût de la virilité

As she recalled the early raptures of their union, she understood the full extent of that lost happiness, and accepted the conclusion that so rich a harvest of love was in itself a whole life, which only sorrow could pay for.

This burst of independence dazzles me. I am like a blind man who has just recovered his sight. Now I begin to understand the vast interval which separates a Carmelite sister from a girl in society. Of ourselves we could never have conceived it.

David empfand die schrecklichste aller Demütigungen. Er verlor die Achtung vor seinem Vater. ~ Verlorene Illusionen

Madame Chardon y su hija Ève creían en Lucien como la mujer de Mahoma creyó en su marido; su abnegación por su porvenir no conocía límites.

If either of you gentlemen should forget himself, I will have his blood, or he will have mine.' "'Amen!' called Daddy Gobseck as he put his pistols back in their place; 'but a man must have blood in his veins though before he can risk it, my son, and you have nothing but mud in yours.

Tears came into Eugene's eyes. He was still under the spell of youthful beliefs, he had just left home, pure and sacred feelings had been stirred within him, and this was his first day on the battlefield of civilization in Paris. Genuine feeling is so infectious that for a moment the three looked at each other in silence.

Ambos, con el espíritu henchido de ansias de éxito, poseían esa elevada inteligencia que pone al hombre en un plano de igualdad con todas las eminencias, y se veían relegado a lo más bajo de la sociedad. Lo injusto de este destino fue un vínculo poderoso.