Honoré de Balzac Quotes

— Je suis tourmenté par de mauvaises idées.
— En quel genre ? Ça se guérit, les idées.
- Comment ?
- En y succombant.

Les mères de famille devraient rechercher de pareils hommes pour leurs filles : l'Esprit est protecteur comme la Divinité, le Désenchantement est perspicace comme un chirurgien, l'Expérience est prévoyante comme une mère. Ces trois sentiments sont les vertus théologales du mariage.

Life is a business transaction.

The tiniest flower is a thought, — a life which corresponds to certain lineaments of the Great Whole, of which they have a constant intuition.

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.

I yield to your wishes. It is the privilege of the women whom we love more than they love us to make the men who love them ignore the ordinary rules of common-sense.

There is something great and terrible about suicide.

La vie d'un homme occupé à manger sa fortune devient souvent une spéculation ; il place ses capitaux en amis, en plaisirs, en protecteurs, en connaissances.

The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the physical presence.

Les idées dévorent les siècles comme les hommes sont dévorés par leurs passions. Quand l'homme sera guéri, l'humanité se guérira peut-être.

He will show you how, during the springtime of life, illusions, innocent hopes, silver threads of gossamer, descend from heaven and return there without ever touching the earth.

A ceux qui ont épuisé la politique, il ne reste plus que la pensée pure.

I’d need rest to refresh my brain, and to get rest it’s necessary to travel, and to travel one must have money, and in order to get money you have to work. . . . I am in a vicious circle . . .from which it is impossible to escape.

A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all.

I belong to the opposition party, which is called life.