Quotes from Honore de Balzac

But in the confessional, or at night, when praying, she wept often, imploring God's forgiveness for the apostasy of the man who thought the contrary of what he professed, and who desired the destruction of the aristocracy and the Church, — the two religions of the house of Cormon.

Plus sa vie est infâme,plus l'homme y tient; elle est alors une protestation,une vengeance de tous les instants.

De entrada, intimidado por el alto rango de esta mujer, a Lucien le dominaron todos los terrores, las esperanzas y desesperanzas que acompañan al primer amor y lo sitúan de forma tan preeminente en el corazón por los golpes que alternativamente asestan el dolor y el placer.

An hour later, Cartier returned with a number of beautiful flowering plants, which he placed himself in the jardinieres, covering them with fresh moss. Godefroid paid his bill; also that of the circulating library, which was brought soon after. Books and flowers! — these were the daily bread of this poor invalid, this tortured creature, who was satisfied with so little.

El contraste entre un lujo exagerado y una exagerada miseria es lo que impresiona antes que nada.

Abbi cura di tutto! Me ne renderai conto laggiù", dimostrando con quest'ultima parola che il cristianesimo deve essere la religione degli avari.

Often the good saint sat mutely by and listened to the hatred of men who concealed themselves under the cloak of constitutional royalists. She shuddered as she foresaw the ruin of the Church.

La flatterie n'émane jamais des grandes âmes, elle est l'apanage des petits esprits qui réussissent à se rapetisser encore pour mieux entrer dans la sphère vitale de la personne autour de laquelle ils gravitent. La flatterie sous-entend un intérêt.

ironia este însu?irea fundamental? a providen?ei

a clerk, a machine, a riding-school hack, eating and drinking and sleeping at fixed hours. I should be like everyone else. And that's what they call living, that life at the grindstone, doing the same thing over and over again.... I am hungry and nothing is offered to appease my appetite.

Las almas grandes están siempre dispuestas a hacer de una desgracia una virtud. Existe además un atractivo irresistible en obstinarse en hacer un bien en aquello en lo que los demás ven un motivo de reproche: la inocencia tiene el atractivo propio del vicio.

God Almighty's outcasts, I call them. Among them, I grant you, is virtue in all the flower of its stupidity, but poverty is no less their portion. At this moment, I think I see the long faces those good folk would pull if God played a practical joke on them and stayed away at the Last Judgment.

Las personas que disfrutan en provincias de algún tipo de consideración y que encuentran a cada paso una prueba de su importancia, no se acostumbran a esta súbita y total pérdida de su valor.

In business, generally speaking, the profits are in proportion to the risks. What does it matter to the State how money is set circulating, provided that it is always in circulation? What does it matter who is rich or who is poor, provided that there is a constant quantity of rich people to be taxed?

In his love for the fair young girl by his side, he was as fain to exalt the present moment as to dread the future. "She is happy to-day; will her happiness last?" he seemed to ask himself, for the old are somewhat prone to foresee their own sorrows in the future of the young.

You are so unlucky as to walk off with something or other belonging to somebody else, and they exhibit you as a curiosity in the Place du Palais-de-Justice; you steal a million, and you are pointed out in every salon as a model of virtue. And you pay thirty millions for the police and the courts of justice, for the maintenance of law and order! A pretty slate of things it is!

Los hombres de genio no tenían hermanos ni hermanas, ni padres ni madres; las grandes obras que habrían de crear les imponían un egoísmo aparente al obligarles a sacrificarlo todo a su grandeza.

El genio no dependía más que de sí mismo, era el único juez de los medios de que se valía, porque solo él conocía el fin que se proponía: debía, por tanto, situarse por encima de las leyes, porque estaba llamado a rehacerlas; por otra parte, quien señorea su siglo puede tomarlo todo, arriesgarlo todo, ya que todo le pertenece.

If I take this tone in speaking of the world to you, I have the right to do so; I know it well. Do you think that I am blaming it? Far from it; the world has always been as it is now. Moralists' strictures will never change it. Mankind are not perfect, but one age is more or less hypocritical than another, and then simpletons say that its morality is high or low. I do not think that the rich are any worse than the poor; man is much the same, high or low, or wherever he is.

So often it happens that this one or that stands condemned by the social laws that govern family relations; and yet there are peculiar circumstances in the case, differences of temperament, divergent interests, innumerable complications of family life that excuse the apparent offence.

Trasladada a París, una mujer que en provincias pasa por ser bonita no llama la menor atención, porque solo es bella según el refrán que reza que «en el país de los ciegos, el tuerto es rey».

How much better to be dead at thirty!' — Well, you thought I was melancholy, and you played all sorts of pranks to amuse me, and between two kisses I said, 'Every day some pretty woman leaves the play before it is over!' — And I do not want to see the last piece; that is all.

Ach mein Freund, heiraten Sie nicht, haben Sie keine Kinder. Man gibt ihnen das Leben und sie geben einem den Tod.

he adopted a sound view of life, appreciating that its universal law obliges us to put up with the less than perfect in everything.