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Honore de Balzac Quotes

Novelist

French novelist born on May 20, 1799, and died on August 18, 1850. Honore de Balzac is renowned for his profound insight and criticism of 19th-century French society, hailed as the 'father of modern fiction'.

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Famous Honore de Balzac Quotes

“A woman's sentimental monkeyshines will always deceive her lover, who invariably waxes ecstatic where her husband necessarily shrugs his shoulders.”

Lovers Husband Shoulders Deceit Deceiving Sentimental Ecstatic

Author:Honore de Balzac

“No husband will ever be better avenged than by his wife's lover.”

Wife Lovers Husband Vengeance

Author:Honore de Balzac

“Un homme n'a jamais pu e lever sa ma|"tresse jusqu'a' lui; mais une femme place toujours son amant aussi haut qu'elle. A man can never elevate his mistress to his rank, but a woman can always place her lover as high as she.”

Men Son Lovers Mistress Levers Femme

Author:Honore de Balzac

“A woman in the depths of despair proves so persuasive that she wrenches the forgiveness lurking deep in the heart of her lover. This is all the more true when that woman is young, pretty, and so decollete as to emerge from the neck of her gown in the costume of Eve.”

Heart Young Lovers Prove Despair Depth Necks Costumes Gowns Persuasive Lurking Wrenches

Author:Honore de Balzac

“No woman allows her lover to descend from his pedestal. Even a god is not forgiven the slightest pettiness.”

Lovers Forgiveness Forgiven Pedestal Pettiness

Author:Honore de Balzac

“A lover teaches a wife all her husband has kept from her.”

Teach Wife Lovers Husband

Author:Honore de Balzac

“Alas, two men are often necessary to provide a woman with a perfect lover, just as in literature a writer composes a type only by employing the singularities of several similar characters.”

Men Two Character Literature Perfect Type Lovers Alas Singularity Perfect Love Employing Perfect Lover

Author:Honore de Balzac

“Many of us marvel at the icy insensitivity with which women snuff out their armours. But if they did not blot out the past in this manner, life for them would lose all dignity and they could never resist the fatal familiarities to which they once submitted.”

Ifs Past Loses Lovers Dignity Familiarity Icy Armour Snuff Insensitivity

Author:Honore de Balzac

“Whereas scoundrels become reconciled after knifing one another, lovers break up irrevocably over a mere glance or word.”

Break Lovers Mere Glances Scoundrels

Author:Honore de Balzac

“Your women of fashion ceases to be a woman. She is neither mother, nor wife, nor lover. She is, medically speaking, sex on the brain.”

Mother Sex Brain Wife Fashion Lovers Cease

Author:Honore de Balzac

“Though your vulgarian does not readily admit that feelings can change overnight, certainly two lovers often part far more abruptly than they came together.”

Love Doe Two Feelings Together Lovers Two Lovers

Author:Honore de Balzac

“True lovers know how trifling a thing is money yet how difficult to blend with love!”

Knows Love Difficult Money Know How Lovers Trifling Love Of Money True Lovers

Author:Honore de Balzac

“At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can only make moan.”

Love Giving Years Young Girl Asks Women Numbers Careers Pride Lovers Comfort Sake Humble Command Esteem Maturity Thirty Glorious Thirty Years

Author:Honore de Balzac

“One exits with one's husband -- one lives with one's lover.”

Lovers Husband Exit

Author:Honore de Balzac

“A lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second; with a husband it runs the other way.”

Thinking Way Firsts Running Literature Lovers Husband Mistress Alaska

Author:Honore de Balzac

“It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.”

Love Life Reason Difficult Simple Marriage Lovers Easier Husband Humorous Profound Simplicity Witty Insane Funny Love Pretty Things

Author:Honore de Balzac

“The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.”

Men Lovers Husband Silent Converses

Book:Letters of Two Brides

Source: Letters of Two Brides

“Lovers have a way of using this word "nothing" which implies exactly the opposite.”

Way Literature Lovers Opposites

Author:Honore de Balzac

“Between the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window.”

Lying Night Differences Player Lovers Husband Window Careless Daylight Swooning

Book:The Magic Skin: Or The Wild Ass's Skin

Source: The Magic Skin: Or The Wild Ass's Skin

“One can imagine the look the two lovers exchanged; it was like a flame, for virtuous lovers have not a shred of hypocrisy.”

Looks Two Imagine Lovers Flames Hypocrisy Virtuous Two Lovers

Author:Honore de Balzac

About the Author

Born: May 20, 1799
Died: August 18, 1850
Known for: Novelist
Quotes: 671

Books & Sources

Letters of Two BridesRelated source material

The Magic Skin: Or The Wild Ass's SkinRelated source material

Analytical Studies: Physiology of Marriage and Petty Troubles of Married LifeRelated source material

A Woman of Thirty: Works of BalzacRelated source material

Seraphita: Works of BalzacRelated source material

Father GoriotRelated source material

Old Goriot: Classic French LiteratureRelated source material

The Physiology of Marriage and Pierre GrassouRelated source material

Cousin BetteRelated source material

Louis LambertRelated source material

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