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
love work men
Love and work have the virtues of making a man pretty indifferent to anything else.
work pride mind
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.
being-yourself work love-yourself
An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.
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!
children effort noble
The election of a deputy to the Legislature offers a noble and majestic spectacle comparable only to the delivery of a child. It involves the same efforts, the same impurities, the same laceration, and the same triumph.
religious twins madness
Religious ecstasy is a madness of thought freed of its bodily bonds, whereas in the ecstasy of love, the forces of twin natures unite, blend and embrace one another.
eye frozen made
No frozen-hearted woman ever I laid eyes on but has made duty her religion.