Honore de Balzac
Honore de Balzac
Honoré de Balzacbal.zak], born Honoré Balzac, 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie Humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth20 May 1799
CountryFrance
poetry sorrow radiance
It is very difficult to pass from pleasure to work. Accordingly more poems have been swallowed up by sorrow than ever happiness caused to blaze forth in unparalleled radiance.
past men sorrow
Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.
soul sorrow slumber
Genuine sorrows are very tranquil in appearance in the deep bed they have dug for themselves. But, seeming to slumber, they corrode the soul like that frightful acid which penetrates crystal.
sorrow mazes adultery
If certain women walk straight into adultery, there are many others who cling to numerous hopes, and commit sin only after wandering through a maze of sorrows.
love two sorrow
Love, according to our contemporary poets, is a privilege which two beings confer upon one another, whereby they may mutually cause one another much sorrow over absolutely nothing.
joy sorrow literature
Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.
art history humanity religion
All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.
inspirational men law
To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.
suicide wall writing
If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.
simplicity inspire disrespect
Gentleness in the gait is what simplicity is in the dress. Violent gestures or quick movements inspire involuntary disrespect.
envy mediocrity pity
There are as many mediocrities exalted through pity as masters decried through envy.
yield envy return
How can we explain the perpetuity of envy--a vice which yields no return?
source enjoyment
We are scarcely apt to berate the source of enjoyment.
envy emotion insult
How natural it is to destroy what we cannot possess, to deny what we do not understand, and to insult what we envy!