Quotes from Honore de Balzac

we often subject ourselves to sentiments by our own volition, — deliberately bind ourselves, and create our own fate; chance has not as much to do with it as we believe.

Human life is sadly fertile in situations where, as a result of either too much meditation or of some catastrophe, our thoughts seem to hold to nothing; they have no substance, no point of departure, and the present has no hooks by which to hold to the past or fasten on the future.

Our bashful fears, our silent interjections, our blushes, as we met each other's eyes, were expressive with an eloquence, a boyish charm, which I have ceased to feel. One must remain young, no doubt, to understand youth.

Politics consist in giving the nation an impetus by creating an oligarchy embodying a fixed theory of government, and able to direct public affairs along a straight path, instead of allowing the country to be pulled in a thousand different directions, which is what has been happening for the last forty years in our beautiful France

N'était-ce pas le seul dieu moderne auquel on ait foi, l'Argent dans toute sa puissance, exprimé par une seule physionomie ? Les doux sentiments de la vie n'occupaient là qu'une place secondaire, ils animaient trois cœurs purs, ceux de Nanon, d'Eugénie et sa mère. Encore, combien d'ignorance dans leur naïveté !

And lastly, here in Paris there is a spirit which you breathe in the air; it infuses the least details, every literary creation bears traces of its influence. You learn more by talk in a cafe, or at a theatre, in one half hour, than you would learn in ten years in the provinces. Here, in truth, wherever you go, there is always something to see, something to learn, some comparison to make.

In the eyes of the Church,' said he, 'adultery is a crime; in those of your tribunals it is a misdemeanor. Adultery drives to the police court in a carriage instead of standing at the bar to be tried. Napoleon's Council of State, touched with tenderness towards erring women, was quite inefficient. Ought they not in this case to have harmonized the civil and the religious law, and have sent the guilty wife to a convent, as of old?

Gentlemen — " said the mayor, anxious to give some proof of devotion to the First Consul and addressing the two agents. "Say 'citizens'; the Republic still exists," interrupted Corentin, looking at the priest with a quizzical air.

?nsan?n manevi yarad?l??? maddi yarad?l???ndan ?u bak?mdan ayr?l?r: Bunda hiçbir ?ey mutlak de?ildir; izlenimlerin yo?unlu?u bir olay çevresine toplad???m?z ki?ilere ya da dü?üncelere göre de?i?ir.

My word! You must be a prophet, Monsieur Vautrin!" said Madame Vauquer. "I am all sorts of things," said Jacques Collin.

A life of debauch and the abuse of liquors debased, day by day, a countenance that was once so handsome. The veins of the face were swollen with blood, the features became coarse, the eyes lost their lashes and grew hard and dry. No longer careful of his person, Philippe exhaled the miasmas of a tavern and the smell of muddy boots, which, to an observer, stamped him with debauchery.

The influence and power of the press is only dawning," said Finot. "Journalism is in its infancy; it will grow. In ten years' time, everything will be brought into publicity. The light of thought will be turned on all subjects, and — — " "The blight of thought will be over it all," corrected Blondet.

Mais Paris est un véritable océan. Jetez-y la sonde, vous n'en connaîtrez jamais la profondeur.

In vain Pons tried to put in a word; La Cibot talked as the wind blows. Means of arresting steam-engines have been invented, but it would tax a mechanician's genius to discover any plan for stopping a portress' tongue.

there was no such piece of driveling nonsense in this world as a certificate of birth; that plenty of women were younger at forty than many a girl of twenty; and, to come to the point, that a woman is no older than she looks.

Clarissa Harlowe

Setting aside all the religious question,' my uncle said, 'I would remark to your Excellency that Nature only owes us life, and that it is society that owes us happiness

The true lover was suffering for the sins of the false. This inconsistency is unfortunately only to be expected so long as men do not know how many flowers are mown down in a young woman's soul by the first stroke of treachery.

Money has never yet lost the smallest opportunity of proving its own stupidity.

You can't say what you think, if it is true, as an illustrious author says it is, that a man must think his words before he speaks his thoughts,

Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and capabilities; society, far from depraving him, as Rousseau asserts, improves him, makes him better; but self-interest also develops his evil tendencies. Christianity, above all, Catholicism, being — as I have pointed out in the Country Doctor (le Medecin de Campagne) — a complete system for the repression of the depraved tendencies of man, is the most powerful element of social order.

oh, you are crying! The Empire has fallen... I salute the Empire.

Some persons may, perhaps, think that this declaration is somewhat autocratic and self-assertive. They will quarrel with the novelist for wanting to be an historian, and will call him to account for writing politics. I am simply fulfilling an obligation — that is my reply. The work I have undertaken will be as long as a history; I was compelled to explain the logic of it, hitherto unrevealed, and its principles and moral purpose.

The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute. The soup warming before the fire must be watched. Am I the kind of woman, do you suppose, to shirk such cares? The humblest task may earn a rich harvest of affection. How pretty is a child's laugh when he finds the food to his liking!