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Honore de Balzac Quotes - Page 19

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The weakest being on earth can accomplish feats of strength. The frailest urchin will ring every doorbell on the street in arctic weather or hoist himself aloft to inscribe his name on a virgin monument.

The weakest being on earth can accomplish feats of strength. The frailest urchin will ring every doorbell on the street in arctic weather or hoist himself aloft to inscribe his name on a virgin monument.

Honore de Balzac
Names, Weather, Earth

Journalists grow accustomed to seeing evil and they let it pass; they proceed to approve it, and they end by committing it themselves.

Honore de Balzac
Evil, Ends, Journalist

The innocence of virgins is like milk which turns when exposed to a clap of thunder, to a tart smell, to a hot day, to the merest nothing.

Honore de Balzac
Smell, Hot, Milk

Sensuality is the death of the soul.

Honore de Balzac
Soul, Sensuality

Neither the passions not justice nor politics nor the great social forces ever consider the victims they strike.

Honore de Balzac
Passion, Justice, Victim

Marriage is a fierce battle before which the two partners ask heaven for its blessing, because loving each other is the most audacious of enterprises; the battle is not slow to start, and victory, that is to say freedom, goes to the cleverest.

Honore de Balzac
Love, Marriage, Blessing

Ambitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute of ideas, astonish the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little knowledge.

Honore de Balzac
Success, Mistake, Ambition
Honore de Balzac (2011). “The Magic Skin: Or The Wild Ass's Skin”, p.99, The Floating Press

A year at the breast is quite enough; children who are suckled longer are said to grow stupid, and I am all for popular sayings.

Honore de Balzac
Education, Children, Stupid
Honore de Balzac (2011). “Letters of Two Brides”, p.207, The Floating Press

To man, faith; to woman, doubt. She bears the heavier burden. Does not woman invariably suffer for two?

Honore de Balzac
Women, Two, Doubt

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.

Honore de Balzac
Funny, Marriage, Witty

To stroll is a science, it is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live.... To stroll is to enjoy, it is to assume a mind-set, it is to admire the sublime pictures of unhappiness, of love, of joy, of graceful or grotesque portraits; it is to plunge one's vision to the depths of a thousand existences: young, it is to desire everything; old, it is to live the life of the young, to marry their passions.

Honore de Balzac
Live Life, Passion, Eye

Happiness lends poetic charms to woman, and dress adorns her like a delicate tinge of rouge.

Honore de Balzac
Women, Dresses, Poetic

By resorting to self-resignation, the unfortunate consummate.

Honore de Balzac
Self, Resignation, Unfortunate

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?

Honore de Balzac
Heart, Pride, Men
Honore de Balzac (2015). “Old Goriot: Classic French Literature”, p.74, 谷月社

One admirable trait in women is their lack of illusions about themselves. They never reason about their most blameworthy actions; their feelings carry them away. Even their dissimulation comes naturally to them, and in them crime is free of all baseness. Most of the time they simply do not know how it happened.

Honore de Balzac
Women, Feelings, Action

Once she has committed sin, there is nothing left for the Protestant woman, whereas the Catholic Church, hope of forgiveness makes a woman sublime.

Honore de Balzac
Catholic, Sublime, Church

There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile.

Honore de Balzac
Smile, Pregnancy, Literature

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

Honore de Balzac
Civilization, Ignorant, Would Be
Honore de Balzac (2015). “Old Goriot: Classic French Literature”, p.45, 谷月社

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.

Honore de Balzac
Love, Eye, Men
Honore de Balzac (2011). “The Magic Skin: Or The Wild Ass's Skin”, p.134, The Floating Press

I should like one of these days to be so well known, so popular, so celebrated, so famous, that it would permit me . . . to break wind in society, and society would think it a most natural thing.

Honore de Balzac
Thinking, Wind, Well Known
"Pages from the Goncourt Journal". Book by Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt, 2007.

An ugly woman, married to King Henry VIII, would have defied the axe and daunted her husband's infidelities.

Honore de Balzac
Kings, Husband, Wife

This surface good-nature which captivates a new acquaintance and is no bar to treachery, which knows no scruple and is never at fault for an excuse, which makes an outcry at the wound which it condones, is one of the most distinctive features of the journalist. This camaraderie (the word is a stroke of genius) corrodes the noblest minds; it eats into their pride like rust, kills the germ of great deeds, and lends a sanction to moral cowardice.

Honore de Balzac
Work, Pride, Mind
"A Daughter of Eve". Book by Honoré de Balzac, 1839.

Love passes quickly, and passes like a street Arab, anxious to mark his way with mischief.

Honore de Balzac
Way, Mark, Anxious

Men who pay their tailors never amount to anything, they never even become Cabinet ministers.

Honore de Balzac
Men, Clothes, Pay

Modern society includes three types of men who can never think very highly of the world--the priest, the physician, and the attorney-at-law. They all wear black, too, for are they not in mourning for every virtue and every illusion?

Honore de Balzac
Men, Thinking, Law

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