Quotes About Author

I should rather labor as another's serf, in the home of a man without fortune, one whose livelihood was meager, than rule over all the departed dead.

Then the father held out the golden scales, and in them he placed two fates of dread death.

The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.

To those who have exhausted statecraft, nothing remains but the realm of pure thought.

Honor is awesome because I say so

Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?

Poverty has in its favour an exquisite sleep filled with beautiful dreams.

The Oratorian boarding school in Vendôme, which Balzac was sent to at a young age. It was a gruelling and miserable place to live, with severe monastic rules.

she perceived several couples whose too hearty glee suggested nothing conjugal;

Mademoiselle des Touches (Camille Maupin) is George Sand in character, and the personal description of her, though applied by some to the famous Mademoiselle Georges, is easily recognized from Couture's drawing.

This short novel is the opening work of the Scènes de la vie privée, the first volume of La Comédie humaine. The novella was originally entitled Gloire et Malheur (Glory and Misfortune) when it was written in 1829. Published by Mame-Delaunay in the following year, it was followed by four revised editions. The final edition was published by Furne in 1842, appearing under the title of La Maison du chat-qui-pelote.

keep this excitement for the letter which shall tell you of my first love. By the way, why always "first?" Is there, I wonder, a second love?

He still had a fragment of his boyhood belief that congressmen were persons of intelligence and importance.

In the study of the profession to which he had looked forward all his life he found irritation and vacuity as well as serene wisdom; he saw no one clear path to Truth but a thousand paths to a thousand truths far-off and doubtful.

Men of measured merriment! Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles, damn the men that run the shops, oh, damn their measured merriment, the men with measured merriment, oh, damn their measured merriment, and DAMN their careful smiles!

Curiously, neither God nor the devil may wear modern dress, but must retain Grecian vestments.

To be a satirist, at all events. The venom of Pope is what is needed. The sense of delight -- the expansion and the compassion of Shakespeare is no good at all for that. He is a bad comic.

Prostration is our natural position. A worm-like movement from a spot of sunlight to a spot of shade, and back, is the type of movement that is natural to men.

In the democratic western countries so-called capitalism leads a saturnalia of "freedom," like a bastard brother of reform.

My thoughts of longing are like the smoke grass, That grows always in profusion, winter or spring!

I've lived on royalties all my life. It is the readers who have supported me.

Roses are red, and here is something new, violets are violet not really blue.

It's like a spell. It's so strong I can't fight it. Is love always like this?