Honoré de Balzac

“Love is the poetry of the senses!”

“Wisdom is that apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love.”

“Retrouver Paris! savez-vous ce que c'est, ô Parisiens?”

“Si les Français ont autant de répugnance que les Anglais ont de propension pour les voyages, peut-être les Français et les Anglais ont-ils raison de part et d'autre. On trouve partout quelque chose de meilleur que l'Angleterre, tandis qu'il est excessivement difficile de retrouver loin de la France les charmes de la France.”

“Mais Paris est un véritable océan. Jetez-y la sonde, vous n'en connaîtrez jamais la profondeur. Parcourez-le, décrivez-le : quelque soin que vous mettiez à le parcourir, à le décrire ; quelques nombreux et intéressés que soient les explorateurs de cette mer, il s'y rencontrera toujours un lieu vierge, un antre inconnu, des fleurs, des perles, des monstres, quelque chose d'inouï, oublié par les plongeurs littéraires.”

“Where poverty ceases, avarice begins.”

“Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in another's happiness than in your own.”

“Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch.”

“Where some one else's welfare is concerned, a young girl becomes as ingenious as a thief. Guileless where she herself is in question, and full of foresight for me,--she is like a heavenly angel forgiving the strange incomprehensible sins of earth.”

“Is there any instinct more deeply implanted in the heart of man than the pride of protection, a protection which is constantly exerted for a fragile and defenceless creature?”

“If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.”

“The human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the steep, downward slope of hatred.”

“Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.”

“Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.”

“What a thing of fantasy a woman may become after dusk.”

“True love rules especially through memory.”

“I'm a great poet. I don't put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings.”

“Love is a religion, and its rituals cost more than those of other religions. It goes by quickly and, like a street urchin, it likes to mark its passage by a trail of devastation.”

“Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.”

“Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.”

“If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down.”

“Mon père m'a donné un cœur, mais vous l'avez fait battre.”

“Le char de la civilisation, semblable à celui de l'idole de Jaggernaut, à peine retardé par un cœur moins facile à broyer que les autres et qui enraye sa roue, l'a brisé bientôt et continue sa marche glorieuse.”

“Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it.”

“Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.”

“I prefer thought to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity.”

“Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.”

“Man can start with aversion and end with love, but if he begins with love and comes round to aversion he will never get back to love.”

“Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.”

“All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.”

“I believe in the incomprehensibility of God.”

“Le bonheur est la poésie des femmes.”

“Elle était jolie par juxtaposition.”

“Here comes Mamma Vauquerr, fair as a starrr; and strung up like a bunch of carrots. Aren't we suffocating ourselves a wee bit?' he asked, placing a hand on the top of her corset. 'A bit of a crush in the vestibule, here, Mamma! If we start crying, there'll be an explosion. Never mind, I'll be there to collect the bits--just like an antiquary.''Now, there's the language of true French gallantry,' murmured Madame Vauquer in an aside to Madame Couture.”

“Good befalls us while we sleep, sometimes.”

“You're a fine fastidious young man, as proud as a lion, as gentle as a girl. You'd make a good catch for the devil.”

“Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.”

“Madame de Nucingen was already there, dressed with the deliberate aim of appealing to all eyes, knowing that thereby she would seem even more attractive to Eugène.”

“No one ought even to desert a woman after throwing her a heap of gold in her distress! He ought to love her forever! You are young, only twenty-one, and kind and upright and fine. You'll ask me how a woman can take money from a man. Oh, God, isn't it natural to share everything with the one we owe all our happiness to? When one has given everything, how can one quibble about a mere portion of it? Money is important only when feeling has ceased. Isn't one bound for life? How can you foresee separation when you think someone loves you? When a man swears eternal love--how can there be any separate concerns in that case?”

“How did you get back?' asked Vautrin. 'I walked,' replied Eugene.'I wouldn't like half-pleasures, myself,' observed the tempter. 'I'd want to go there in my own carriage, have my own box, and come back in comfort. All or nothing, that's my motto.''And a very good one,' said Madame Vauquer.”

“However gross a man may be, the minute he expresses a strong and genuine affection, some inner secretion alters his features, animates his gestures, and colors his voice. The stupidest man will often, under the stress of passion, achieve heights of eloquence, in thought if not in language, and seem to move in some luminous sphere. Goriot's voice and gesture had at this moment the power of communication that characterizes the great actor. Are not our finer feelings the poems of the human will?”

“And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink.”

“A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love.”

“What moralists describe as the mysteries of the human heart are solely the deceiving thoughts, the spontaneous impulses of self-regard. The sudden changes in character, about which so much has been said, are instinctive calculations for the furtherance of our own pleasures. Seeing himself now in his fine clothes, his new gloves and shoes, Eugène de Rastignac forgot his noble resolve. Youth, when it swerves toward wrong, dares not look in the mirror of conscience; maturity has already seen itself there. That is the whole difference between the two phases of life.”

“We flew back home like swallows. 'Is it happiness that makes us so light?' Agathe asked.”

“Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!”

“He hesitated till the last moment, but finally dropped them in the box, saying, "I shall win!"--the cry of a gambler, the cry of the great general, the compulsive cry that has ruined more men than it has ever saved.”

“The duchess turned on Eugène with one of those insolent stares that envelop a man from head to foot, flatten him out, and leave him at zero.”

“The viscountess had raised the forefinger of her right hand and made a pretty gesture toward a stool at her feet. There was such intense tyrannical passion in the gesture that the marquis relinquished the doorknob and came back.”

“It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.”