French novelist and playwright (1799-1850)
For want of exercising in nature’s own way the activity bestowed upon women, and yet impelled to spend it in some way or other, Mademoiselle Gamard had acquired the habit of using it in petty intrigues, provincial cabals, and those self-seeking schemes which occupy, sooner or later, the lives of all old maids.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
By remaining unmarried, a creature of the female sex becomes void of meaning; selfish and cold, she creates repulsion.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected at least one woman.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
What is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood?
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Well, gold contains all things in embryo; gold realizes all things for us.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
The married woman who is the most chaste may be also the most voluptuous.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Man is the minister of Nature, and society engrafts itself upon her.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
His life flowed soundless as the sands of an hour-glass.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
Wisdom is the understanding of celestial things to which the Spirit is brought by Love.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
What an admirable maneuver it would be to make a wife dance, and to feed her on vegetables!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Time is their tyrant: it fails them, it escapes them; they can neither expand it nor cut it short.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Thus we are brought to the third circle of this hell, which, perhaps, will some day find its Dante.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one."
HONORE DE BALZAC
The Lily of the Valley
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.
HONORé DE BALZAC
attributed, And I Quote
Love consists almost always in conversation. There are few things inexhaustible in a lover: goodness, gracefulness and delicacy. To feel everything, to divine everything, to anticipate everything; to reproach without bringing affliction upon a tender heart; to make a present without pride; to double the value of a certain action by the way in which it is done; to flatter rather by actions than by words; to make oneself understood rather than to produce a vivid impression; to touch without striking; to make a look and the sound of the voice produce the effect of a caress; never to produce embarrassment; to amuse without offending good taste; always to touch the heart; to speak to the soul—this is all that women ask. They will abandon all the delights of all the nights of Messalina, if only they may live with a being who will yield them those caresses of the soul, for which they are so eager, and which cost nothing to men if only they have a little consideration.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
How hungry one's heart gets!
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
A man, like many another, of complex nature, he was easily fascinated by the comfort of luxury, without which he could hardly have lived; and, in the same way, he clung to the social distinctions which his principles contemned. Thus his theories as an artist, a thinker, and a poet were in frequent antagonism with his tastes, his feelings, and his habits as a man of rank and wealth; but he comforted himself for his inconsistencies by recognizing them in many Parisians, like himself liberal by policy and aristocrats by nature.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gambara
A husband and wife found themselves in love with each other for the first time after twenty-seven years of marriage.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage