Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in another's happiness than in your own.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
I'm a great poet. I don't put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
Good befalls us while we sleep, sometimes.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
Do you know how a man makes his way here? By brilliant genius or by skilful corruption. You must either cut your way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them like a plague.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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?
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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?
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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?
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
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.
Balzac, Honore de and A. J. Krailsheimer (Translator). Pere Goriot. 1835.
Where poverty ceases, avarice begins.
Balzac, Honore de and Kathleen Raine (Translator). Lost Illusions. 1837.
For avarice begins where poverty ends.
Balzac, Honore de and Kathleen Raine (Translator). Lost Illusions. 1837.
...for young people always begin by loving exaggeration, that infirmity of noble minds.
Balzac, Honore de and Kathleen Raine (Translator). Lost Illusions. 1837.
...they treated him with the overwhelming politeness that well-bred people use towards their inferiors.
Balzac, Honore de and Kathleen Raine (Translator). Lost Illusions. 1837.
Great minds always tend to see virtue in misfortune.
Balzac, Honore de and Kathleen Raine (Translator). Lost Illusions. 1837.
Genius is answerable only to itself; it is the sole judge of the means, since it alone knows the end; thus genius must consider itself as above the law, for it is the task of genius to remake the law; moreover the man who frees himself from his time and place may take everything, hazard everything, for everything is his by right.
Balzac, Honore de and Kathleen Raine (Translator). Lost Illusions. 1837.
He wrote one of those wild letters in which the young point a pistol at a refusal, a letter full of childish casuistry and of highminded irrational reasoning, enchanting verbiage, embroidered with those naive declarations, spoken unawares from the heart, that women love so much.
Balzac, Honore de and Kathleen Raine (Translator). Lost Illusions. 1837.
Nobility of mind does not always go with elegance of manners. Racine may have had the manners of a courtier, but Corneille behaved more like a cattle dealer.
Balzac, Honore de and Kathleen Raine (Translator). Lost Illusions. 1837.
Like most young people, these two attributed to the world their own intelligence and virtues. Youth who knows no failure has no mercy on the faults of other people; but it has also a sublime faith in them.
Balzac, Honore de and Kathleen Raine (Translator). Lost Illusions. 1837.
Now literary success can only be won in solitude by persevering labor.
Balzac, Honore de and Kathleen Raine (Translator). Lost Illusions. 1837.
A great writer is nothing less than a martyr who does not die.
Balzac, Honore de and Kathleen Raine (Translator). Lost Illusions. 1837.
But woman brings disorder into society through passion.
Balzac, Honore de and Kathleen Raine (Translator). Lost Illusions. 1837.
Nature knows nothing but solid bodies; your science deals only with combinations of surfaces. And so nature constantly gives the lie to all your laws; can you name one to which no fact makes an exception?
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
Today brings the sad, glad tidings that Mrs. Abraham Lincoln has passed from that darkness which had fallen upon her path through this life, out into the light and joy of that life toward which her vision has so long been strained. Modern education is lethal to children.... We stuff them with mathematics, we pummel them with science, and we use them up before their time.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
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.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
At this moment, who would not remain persuaded that these women were virtuous? Are they not the flower of the country? Are they all not fresh, ravishing, intoxicating with beauty, youth, life and love? To believe in their virtue is a kind of social religion; because they are the world's ornament and the glory of France.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
Our most bitter enemies are our own kith and kin.... Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother!
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
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.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
The questioning spirit is the rebellious spirit. A rebellion is always either a cloak to hide a prince, or the swaddling wrapper of a new rule.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
The most virtuous women have something within them, something that is never chaste.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
Peter the Hermit, Calvin, and Robespierre, sons of the same soil, at intervals of three centuries were, in a political sense, the levers of Archimedes. Each in turn was an embodied idea finding its fulcrum in the interests of man.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
Tyranny produces two results, exactly opposite in character, and which are symbolized in those two great types of the slave in classical times—Epictetus and Spartacus. The one is hatred with its evil train, the other meekness with its Christian graces.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
Lovers have a way of using this word "nothing" which implies exactly the opposite.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
It would be curious to know what leads a man to become a stationer rather than a baker, when he is no longer compelled, as among the Egyptians, to succeed to his father's craft.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
A widow has two duties of a contradictory nature—she is a mother, and she ought to exert a father's power.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
A husband who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely concealed.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
All human power is a compound of patience and time. People want strong and ensure.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
Equality may be right, but no human power can not convert it done.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
France is a country that loves to change their government if it is always the same.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
Hope is a memory that desires, the memory is a memory that has enjoyed.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
Forgetting is the great secret of strong and creative lives.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
The key to all sciences is undoubtedly the question mark and we have most of the major discoveries in how, and wisdom in life is perhaps to ask for anything, why?
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
A society of atheists soon invent a religion.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa.
Balzac, Honore de and George Saintsbury (Translator). The Human Comedy. 1845.
Source: European Graduate School (EGS)
