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Honoré de Balzac

French novelist and playwright (1799–1850)

Honoré de Balzac (20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist. Along with Flaubert, he is generally regarded as a founding father of realism in European literature.

Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.
Those who spend too fast never grow rich.

Quotes

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Various

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All human power is a compound of time and patience.
 
Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact.
 
True love is eternal, infinite, always like unto itself; it is equable, pure, without violent demonstration…
 
Swedenborgianism, which is only a repetition in the Christian sense of ancient ideas, is my religion, with the addition which I wish to make to it of the incomprehensibility of God.
 
When women love, they forgive everything, even our crimes; when they do not love, they cannot forgive anything, not even our virtues.
 
People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.
  • Qui dépense trop n’est jamais riche.
  • Je suis un galérien de plume et d'encre.
    • I am a galley slave to pen and ink.
      • Letter to Zulma Carraud (2 July 1832), translated by C. Lamb Kenney
  • Tout pouvoir humain est un composé de patience et de temps.
    • All human power is a compound of time and patience.
  • La gloire est le soleil des morts.
  • L'égalité sera peut-être un droit, mais aucune puissance humaine ne saura le convertir en fait.
    • Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact.
  • Les hommes sont ainsi faits, ils résistent à une discussion sérieuse et tombent sous un regard.
    • Men are like that, they can resist sound argument, yet yield to a glance.
    • Le Contrat de mariage, Scènes de la vie privée (1835)
  • Vous savez quelles sont mes religions.Je ne suis point orthodoxe et ne crois pas à l'Église romaine. Je trouve que s'il ya quelque plan digne du sien, ce sont les transformations humaines faisant marcher l'être vers des zones inconnues.C'est la loi des créations qui nous sont inférieures : ce doit être la loi des créations supérieures.Le swedenborgisme, qui n'est qu'une répétition, dans le sens chrétien, d'anciennes idées, est ma religion, avec l'augmentation que j'y fais de l'incompréhensibilité de Dieu.
    • You know what my religion is. I am not orthodox, and I do not believe in the Roman Church. I think that if there is a scheme worthy of our kind it is that of human transformations causing the human being to advance toward unknown zones. That is the law of creations inferior to ourselves; it ought to be the law of superior creations. Swedenborgianism, which is only a repetition in the Christian sense of ancient ideas, is my religion, with the addition which I wish to make to it of the incomprehensibility of God.
 
Tone is light in another shape. In music, instruments perform the functions of the colours employed in painting.
  • Tone is light in another shape. In music, instruments perform the functions of the colours employed in painting.
    • Gambara (1837)
  • Le courant des affaires devant toujours s'expédier, il surnage une certaine quantité de commis qui se sait indispensable quoique congéable à merci et qui veut rester en place. La bureaucratie, pouvoir gigantesque mis en mouvement par des nains, est née ainsi. Si en subordonnant toute chose et tout homme à sa volonté, Napoléon avait retardé pour un moment l'influence de la bureaucratie, ce rideau pesant placé entre le bien à faire et celui qui peut l'ordonner, elle s'était définitivement organisée sous le gouvernement constitutionnel, nécessairement ami des médiocrités, grand amateur de pièces probantes et de comptes, enfin tracassier comme une petite bourgeoise.
    • As routine business must always be dispatched, there is always a fluctuating number of supernumeraries who cannot be dispensed with, and yet are liable to dismissal at a moment's notice. All of these naturally are anxious to be "established clerks." And thus Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pigmies, came into the world. Possibly Napoleon retarded its influence for a time, for all things and all men were forced to bend to his will; but none the less the heavy curtain of Bureaucracy was drawn between the right thing to be done and the right man to do it. Bureaucracy was definitely organized, however, under a constitutional government with a natural kindness for mediocrity, a predilection for categorical statements and reports, a government as fussy and meddlesome, in short, as a small shopkeeper's wife.
      • Les Employés [The Government Clerks] (1838), translated by James Waring; also known as Bureaucracy, or, A Civil Service Reformer.
  • Il y a deux musiques : une petite, mesquine, de second ordre, partout semblable à elle-même, qui repose sur une centaine de phrases que chaque musicien s'approprie, et qui constitue un bavardage plus ou moins agréable avec lequel vivent la plupart des compositeurs.
    • Music is of two kinds: one petty, poor, second-rate, never varying, its base the hundred or so phrasings which all musicians understand, a babbling which is more or less pleasant, the life that most composers live.
  • Les hivers sont pour les femmes à la mode ce que fut jadis une campagne pour les militaires de l’empire.
    • The winters are to fashionable women what a campaign once was to the soldiers of the Empire.
  • Lorsque les femmes nous aiment, elles nous pardonnent tout, même nos crimes ; lorsqu'elles ne nous aiment pas, elles ne nous pardonnent rien, pas même nos vertus !
    • When women love, they forgive everything, even our crimes; when they do not love, they cannot forgive anything, not even our virtues.
      • La Muse du Département (1843), translated by James Waring, part II, ch. XXXIV (part XIII in the translated version)
  • On amplifie également le malheur et le bonheur, nous ne sommes jamais ni si malheureux, ni si heureux qu'on le dit.
    • People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.
      • Modeste Mignon (1844), translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, ch. XXIV: The Poet Feels That He Is Loved Too Well
  • Une jeune fille est comme une fleur qu'on a cueillie ; mais la femme coupable est une fleur sur laquelle on a marché.
    • A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.
      • Honorine (1845), translated by Clara Bell
  • Malheureusement, ce portrait ne corrigera personne de la manie d’aimer de anges au doux sourire, à l’air rêveur, à figure candide, dont le cœur est un coffre-fort.
    • Unfortunately her portrait will cure no one of the addiction to loving sweetly smiling angels with dreamy looks, innocent faces, and a strong-box for a heart.
      • La cousine Bette (1846), translated by Sylvia Raphael, ch. XXXVII: Moral reflections on immorality
  • Tuer un parent de qui l’on se plaint, c’est quelque chose ; mais hériter de lui, c’est là un plaisir !
    • To kill a relative of whom you are tired, is something; but to inherit his property afterwards — that is a real pleasure!
 
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.
  • Je voudrais, un jour, avoir un nom si connu, si populaire, si célèbre, si glorieux enfin, qu'il m'authorisât, à p[éter] dans le monde, et que le monde trouvât ça tout naturel.
    • 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.
      • As quoted in the entry for 13 October 1855, in the Journals of Jules and Edmond de Goncourt, also known as Mémoires de la vie littéraire, vol. I (1887), translated by Lewis Galantière

Physiology of Marriage (1829)

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To saunter is a science; it is the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to saunter is to live… To saunter is to enjoy life; it is to indulge the flight of fancy…
 
Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is innate.
 
The most virtuous women have in them something that is never chaste.
 
It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things from time to time.
 
The more a man judges, the less he loves.
 
Who would not at the present moment wish to retain the persuasion that wives are virtuous? Are they not the supreme flower of the country? Are they not all blooming creatures, fascinating the world by their beauty, their youth, their life and their love? To believe in their virtue is a sort of social religion, for they are the ornament of the world, and form the chief glory of France.
Physiologie du Mariage. translated by Joseph Walker McSpadden. English text here.
  • Le mariage est un combat à outrage avant lequel les deux époux demandent au ciel sa bénédiction, parce que s'aimer toujours est la plus téméraire des entreprises ; le combat ne tarde pas à commencer, et la victoire, c'est-à-dire la liberté, demeure au plus adroit.
    • Marriage is a fight to the death, before which the wedded couple ask a blessing from heaven, because it is the rashest of all undertakings to swear eternal love; the fight at once commences and victory, that is to say liberty, remains in the hands of the cleverer of the two.
  • Qui ne voudrait pas rester persuadé que ces femmes sont vertueuses ? Ne sont-elles pas la fleur du pays ? Ne sont-elles pas toutes verdissantes, ravissantes, étourdissantes de beauté, de jeunesse, de vie et d'amour ? Croire à leur vertu est une espèce de religion sociale ; car elles sont l'ornement du monde et font la gloire de la France.
    • Who would not at the present moment wish to retain the persuasion that wives are virtuous? Are they not the supreme flower of the country? Are they not all blooming creatures, fascinating the world by their beauty, their youth, their life and their love? To believe in their virtue is a sort of social religion, for they are the ornament of the world, and form the chief glory of France.
      • Part I, Meditation II: Marriage Statistics
  • Flâner est une science, c'est la gastronomie de l'œil.Se promener, c'est végéter ; flâner, c'est vivre... Flâner, c'est jouir, c'est recueillir des traits d'esprit, c'est admirer de sublimes tableaux de malheur, d'amour, de joie, des portraits gracieux ou grotesques ; c'est plonger ses regards au fond de mille existences : jeune, c'est tout désirer, tout posséder ; vieillard, c'est vivre de la vie des jeunes gens, c'est épouser leurs passions.
    • To saunter is a science; it is the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to saunter is to live… To saunter is to enjoy life; it is to indulge the flight of fancy; it is to enjoy the sublime pictures of misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or grotesque physiognomies; it is to pierce with a glance the abysses of a thousand existences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their passions.
  • La vertu des femmes est peut-être une question de tempérament.
    • The virtue of women is perhaps a question of temperament.
      • Part I, Meditation IV, aphorism XIX
  • Les femmes les plus vertueuses ont en elles quelque chose qui n'est jamais chaste.
    • The most virtuous women have in them something that is never chaste.
      • Part I, Meditation IV, aphorism XX
  • L'amour est la plus mélodieuse de toutes les harmonies, et nous en avons le sentiment inné.La femme est un délicieux instrument de plaisir, mais il faut en connaitre les frémissantes cordes, en étudier la pose, le clavier timide, le doigté changeant et capricieux.
    • Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it.
  • Un homme ne peut se marier sans avoir étudié l'anatomie et disséqué une femme au moins.
    • A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected at least one woman.
      • Part I, Meditation V: Of the Predestined, aphorism XXVIII
  • La puissance ne consiste pas à frapper fort ou souvent, mais à frapper juste.
    • Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.
      • Part I, Meditation V: Of the Predestined, aphorism XLIII
  • Il est plus facile d'être amant que mari, par la raison qu'il est plus difficile d'avoir de l'esprit tous les jours que de dire de jolies choses de temps en temps.
    • It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things from time to time.
      • Part I, Meditation V: Of the Predestined, aphorism LXIX
  • La femme est une propriété que l'on acquiert par contrat, elle est mobilière, car la possession vaut titre ; enfin, la femme n'est, à proprement parler, qu'une annexe de l'homme ; or, tranchez, coupez, rognez, elle vous appartient à tous les titres.
    • The wife is a piece of property, acquired by contract; she is part of your furniture, for possession is nine-tenths of the law; in fact, the woman is not, to speak correctly, anything but an adjunct to the man; therefore abridge, cut, file this article as you choose; she is in every sense yours.
      • Part II, Meditation Number XII: The Hygiene of Marriage
  • Ainsi ne vous laissez jamais séduire par la fausse bonhomie des lits jumeaux.
    C'est l'invention la plus sotte, la plus perfide et la plus dangereuse qui soit au monde. Honte et anathème à qui l'imagina !
    • Do not therefore allow yourself to be led astray by the specious good nature of such an institution as that of twin beds.
      It is the silliest, the most treacherous, the most dangerous in the world. Shame and anathema to him who conceived it.
      • Part II, Meditation XVII, The Theory of the Bed, I: Twin Beds
  • Avoir sa belle-mère en province quand on demeure à Paris, et vice versa, est une de ces bonnes fortunes qui se rencontrent toujours trop rarement.
    • To be able to keep a mother-in-law in the country while he lives in Paris, and vice versa, is a piece of good fortune which a husband too rarely meets with.
      • Part III, Meditation XXV: Allies, Section II: Of the Mother-in-Law

Gobseck (1830)

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  • La vie n'est-elle pas une machine à laquelle l'argent imprime le mouvement ?
  • Quels effroyables tableaux ne présenteraient pas les âmes de ceux qui environnent les lits funèbres, si l'on pouvait en peindre les idées ? Et toujours la fortune est le mobile des intrigues qui s'élaborent, des plans qui se forment, des trames qui s'ourdissent !
    • What frightful tableaux might present themselves, if one could paint the ideas found in the souls of those who surround the deathbeds? And money is always the mobilizer of the intrigues elaborated, the plans formulated, the conspiracies woven!
    • p. 72, 1921 édition

Treatise on Elegant Life (1830)

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  • Or les trois classes d'être créés par les mœurs sont :
    L'homme qui travaille ;
    L'homme qui pense ;
    L'homme qui ne fait rien.
    • However the three classes of beings created by the manners are:
      The man who works;
      The man who thinks;
      The man who does nothing.
      • Part I. Généralités (Generalities), Chapter I. Prolégomènes (Prolegomena).
  • Une déchirure est un malheur, une tache est un vice.
    • A tear is a misfortune, a stain is a vice.
      • Part III. Des Choses qui procèdent immédiatement de la personne (Things That Immediately Proceed the Person), Chapter V. De la Toilette dans toutes ses parties (Of the Toilet in all its Parts).

The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831)

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Thought is a key to all treasures; the miser’s gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared above this world, where my enjoyments have been intellectual joys.

La Peau de chagrin, also known as The Magic Skin translated by Ellen Marriage - French text - English text

 
Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy?

Part I: The Talisman

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  • Entre le joueur du matin et le joueur du soir il existe la différence qui distingue le mari nonchalant de l'amant pâmé sous les fenêtres de sa belle.
    • 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.
  • Il existe je ne sais quoi de grand et d'épouvantable dans le suicide.
    • There is something great and terrible about suicide.
  • La pensée est la clef de tous les trésors, elle procure les joies de l'avare sans donner ses soucis. Aussi ai-je plané sur le monde, où mes plaisirs ont toujours été des jouissances intellectuelles.
    • Thought is a key to all treasures; the miser’s gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared above this world, where my enjoyments have been intellectual joys.
  • Le mal n'est peut-être qu'un violent plaisir. Qui pourrait déterminer le point où la volupté devient un mal et celui où le mal est encore la volupté ? Les plus vives lumières du monde idéal ne caressent-elles pas la vue, tandis que les plus douces ténèbres du monde physique la blessent toujours.
    • For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure? Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy?
  • Quand le despotisme est dans les lois, la liberté se trouve dans les mœurs, et vice versa.
    • When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa.
  • Le bonheur ne vient-il donc pas de l'âme ?
    • But does not happiness come from the soul within?

Part II: A Woman Without a Heart

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If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings.
 
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.
  • Je te le déclare, en mon âme et conscience, la conquête du pouvoir ou d'une grande renommée littéraire me paraissait un triomphe moins difficile à obtenir qu'un succès auprès d'une femme de haut rang, jeune, spirituelle et gracieuse.
    • I declare, on my soul and conscience, that the attainment of power, or of a great name in literature, seemed to me an easier victory than a success with some young, witty, and gracious lady of high degree.
  • Pour juger un homme, au moins faut-il être dans le secret de sa pensée, de ses malheurs, de ses émotions ; ne vouloir connaître de sa vie que les événements matériels, c'est faire de la chronologie, l'histoire des sots !
    • If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know merely the outward events of a man’s life would only serve to make a chronological table — a fool’s notion of history.
  • Peut-être veulent-elles [les femmes] un peu d'hypocrisie ?
    • Women, perhaps, even require a little hypocrisy.
  • L'amour abstrait ne suffit pas à un homme pauvre et grand, il en veut tous les dévouements... La véritable épouse en cœur, en chair et en os, se laisse traîner là où va celui en qui réside sa vie, sa force, sa gloire, son bonheur.
    • Love in the abstract is not enough for a great man in poverty; he has need of its utmost devotion... She who is really a wife, one in heart, flesh, and bone, must follow wherever he leads, in whom her life, her strength, her pride, and happiness are centered.
  • La faute des hommes supérieurs est de dépenser leurs jeunes années à se rendre dignes de la faveur. Pendant qu'ils thésaurisent, leur force est la science pour porter sans effort le poids d'une puissance qui les fuit ; les intrigants, riches de mots et dépourvus d'idées, vont et viennent, surprennent les sots, et se logent dans la confiance des demi-niais.
    • 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.
  • Le calme et le silence nécessaires au savant ont je ne sais quoi de doux, d'enivrant comme l'amour. L'exercice de la pensée, la recherche des idées, les contemplations tranquilles de la science nous prodiguent d'ineffables délices, indescriptibles comme tout ce qui participe de l'intelligence, dont les phénomènes sont invisibles à nos sens extérieurs.
    • The tranquility and peace that a scholar needs is something as sweet and exhilarating as love. Unspeakable joys are showered on us by the exertion of our mental faculties; the quest of ideas, and the tranquil contemplation of knowledge; delights indescribable, because purely intellectual and impalpable to our senses.
  • L'étude prête une sorte de magie à tout ce qui nous environne.
    • Study lends a kind of enchantment to all our surroundings.
  • La vie d'un homme occupé à manger sa fortune devient souvent une spéculation ; il place ses capitaux en amis, en plaisirs, en protecteurs, en connaissances.
    • The life of a man who deliberately runs through his fortune often becomes a business speculation; his friends, his pleasures, patrons, and acquaintances are his capital.
  • L'amour est une source naïve, partie de son lit de cresson, de fleurs, de gravier, qui rivière, qui fleuve, change de nature et d'aspect à chaque flot, et se jette dans un incommensurable océan où les esprits incomplets voient la monotonie, où les grandes âmes s'abîment en de perpétuelles contemplations.
    • Love is like some fresh spring, that leaves its cresses, its gravel bed and flowers to become first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation.
  • Un homme sans passion et sans argent reste maître de sa personne ; mais un malheureux qui aime ne s'appartient plus et ne peut pas se tuer. L'amour nous donne une sorte de religion pour nous-mêmes, nous respectons en nous une autre vie ; il devient alors le plus horrible des malheurs.
    • 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.
  • Notre conscience est un juge infaillible, quand nous ne l'avons pas encore assassinée.
    • Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it.
  • Les musiciennes sont presque toujours amoureuses. Celle qui chantait ainsi devait savoir bien aimer.
    • Musicians are seldom unemotional; a woman who could sing like that must know how to love indeed.

The Vicar of Tours (1832)

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Le curé de Tours. translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. French text here. English text here.

  • Les gens sans esprit ressemblent aux mauvaises herbes qui se plaisent dans les bons terrains, et ils aiment d'autant plus être amusés qu'ils s'ennuient eux-mêmes.
    • Persons without minds are like weeds that delight in good earth; they want to be amused by others, all the more because they are dull within.
      • Ch. I
  • Les vieilles filles n'ayant pas fait plier leur caractère et leur vie à une autre vie ni à d'autres caractères, comme l'exige la destinée de la femme, ont, pour la plupart, la manie de vouloir tout faire plier autour d'elles.
    • Old maids who have never yielded in their habits of life or in their characters to other lives and other characters, as the fate of woman exacts, have, as a general thing, a mania for making others give way to them.
      • Ch. I
  • Entre personnes sans cesse en présence, la haine et l'amour vont toujours croissant : on trouve à tout moment des raisons pour s'aimer ou se haïr mieux.
    • Between persons who are perpetually in each other's company dislike or love increases daily; every moment brings reasons to love or hate each other more and more.
      • Ch. I
  • La vie habituelle fait l'âme, et l'âme fait la physionomie.
    • The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the physical presence.
      • Ch. II

Louis Lambert (1832)

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All poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.
  • Penser, c'est voir ! me dit-il un jour emporté par une de nos objections sur le principe de notre organisation. Toute science humaine repose sur la déduction, qui est une vision lente par laquelle on descend de la cause à l'effet, par laquelle on remonte de l'effet à la cause ; ou, dans une plus large expression, toute poésie comme toute oeuvre d'art procède d'une rapide vision des choses.
    • "Thinking is seeing," said he one day, carried away by some objection raised as to the first principles of our organisation."Every human science is based on deduction, which is a slow process of seeing by which we work up from the effect to the cause; or, in a wider sense, all poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things."
      • As translated by Clara Bell
  • Je préfère la pensée à l'action, une idée à une affaire, la contemplation au mouvement.
    • I prefer thought to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity.
      • As translated by Clara Bell
  • It is impossible any longer to question the priority of the Asiatic writings over our Holy Scriptures. For those who are able to admit this historical fact in good faith, the world grows astonishingly greater. Was it not on a plateau in Asia that the few men who survived the cataclysm found refuge? .. The history of the origin of man in the Bible is only the genealogy of a swarm which came out of the human hive hanging on the mountain- sides of Tibet between the summits of Himalaya and the Caucasus. . . . A great history rests beneath these names of men and places, behind these fictions which attract us irresistibly without our knowing why. Perhaps we breathe in them the air of our new humanity.
    • quoted in Poliakov, L. (1974). The Aryan myth : a history of racist and nationalist ideas in Europe page 200

The Girl with Golden Eyes (1833)

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See also La Fille aux yeux d'or
  • In Paris the rich encounter wit ready-made, pre-digested science, and opinions already formulated, which excuse them from hand to have wit, science or opinion.
  • La discrétion est le plus habile des calculs.

Father Goriot (1835)

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translated by Ellen Marriage. French text here. English text here.

  • Le lendemain Rastignac s'habilla fort élégamment, et alla, vers trois heures de l'après-midi, chez madame de Restaud, en se livrant pendant la route à ces espérances étourdiment folles qui rendent la vie des jeunes gens si belle d'émotions : ils ne calculent alors ni les obstacles ni les dangers, ils voient en tout le succès, poétisent leur existence par le seul jeu de leur imagination, et se font malheureux ou tristes par le renversement de projets qui ne vivaient encore que dans leurs désirs effrénés; s'ils n'étaient pas ignorants et timides, le monde social serait impossible.
    • The next day Rastignac dressed himself very elegantly, and about three o'clock in the afternoon went to call on Mme. de Restaud. On the way thither he indulged in the wild intoxicating dreams which fill a young head so full of delicious excitement. Young men at his age take no account of obstacles nor of dangers; they see success in every direction; imagination has free play, and turns their lives into a romance; they are saddened or discouraged by the collapse of one of the visionary schemes that have no existence save in their heated fancy. If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.
      • Part I
  • Notre cœur est un trésor, videz-le d'un coup, vous êtes ruinés. Nous ne pardonnons pas plus à un sentiment de s'être montré tout entier qu'à un homme de ne pas avoir un sou à lui.
    • Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt. We show no more mercy to the affection that reveals its utmost extent than we do to another kind of prodigal who has not a penny left.
      • Part I
  • "Je réussirai !" Le mot du joueur, du grand capitaine, mot fataliste qui perd plus d'hommes qu'il n'en sauve.
    • "I shall succeed!" he said to himself. So says the gambler; so says the great captain; but the three words that have been the salvation of some few, have been the ruin of many more.
      • Part I
  • L'homme est imparfait. Il est parfois plus ou moins hypocrite, et les niais disent alors qu'il a ou n'a pas de mœurs.
    • Mankind are not perfect, but one age is more or less hypocritical than another, and then simpletons say that its morality is high or low.
      • Part II
  • Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu'il a été proprement fait.
    • The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.
      • Part II
      • A variant, "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime," has appeared as a quotation of Balzac; but it may have originated in a paraphrase in The Oil Barons: Men of Greed and Grandeur (1971) by Richard O'Connor, p. 47: "Balzac maintained that behind every great fortune there is a great crime." It also appears at the beginning of the novel "The Godfather," published two years earlier.
  • — Je suis tourmenté par de mauvaises idées.
    — En quel genre ? Ça se guérit, les idées.
    - Comment ?
    - En y succombant.
    • "I am tormented by temptations."
      "What kind? There is a cure for temptation."
      "What?"
      "Yielding to it."
      • Part II
  • L’homme est imparfait. Il est parfois plus ou moins hypocrite, et les niais disent alors qu’il a ou n’a pas de mœurs.
    • Man is imperfect. He is at some times more or less hypocritical than at others, and then simpletons say that his morality is high or low.

Séraphîta (1835)

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Clouds signify the veil of the Most High.
Séraphîta.translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley.English text here.
 
Science is the language of the Temporal world, Love is that of the Spiritual world.
 
The most real of all splendors are not in outward things, they are within us.
  • If we study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment — giving to that word its exact significance. Man does not create forces; he employs the only force that exists and which includes all others, namely Motion, the breath incomprehensible of the sovereign Maker of the universe.
    • Ch. 2: Seraphita
  • Wisdom is the understanding of celestial things to which the Spirit is brought by Love.
    • Ch. 3: Seraphita - Seraphitus
  • Man dies in despair while the Spirit dies in ecstasy.
    • Ch. 3: Seraphita - Seraphitus
  • The tiniest flower is a thought, — a life which corresponds to certain lineaments of the Great Whole, of which they have a constant intuition.
    • Ch. 3: Seraphita - Seraphitus
  • Clouds signify the veil of the Most High.
    • Ch. 3: Seraphita - Seraphitus
  • Science is the language of the Temporal world, Love is that of the Spiritual world. Thus man takes note of more than he is able to explain, while the Angelic Spirit sees and comprehends. Science depresses man; Love exalts the Angel. Science is still seeking, Love has found. Man judges Nature according to his own relations to her; the Angelic Spirit judges it in its relation to Heaven. In short, all things have a voice for the Spirit.
    • Ch. 3: Seraphita - Seraphitus
  • Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all.
    • Ch. 3: Seraphita - Seraphitus
  • We have long struggles with ourself, of which the outcome is one of our actions; they are, as it were, the inner side of human nature. This inner side is God's; the outer side belongs to men.
    • Ch. 3: Seraphita - Seraphitus
  • The most real of all splendors are not in outward things, they are within us.
    • Ch. 4: The Clouds of the Sanctuary
  • 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?
    • Ch. 4: The Clouds of the Sanctuary
  • White and shining virgin of all human virtues, ark of the covenant between earth and heaven, tender and strong companion partaking of the lion and of the lamb, Prayer! Prayer will give you the key of heaven! Bold and pure as innocence, strong, like all that is single and simple, this glorious, invincible Queen rests, nevertheless, on the material world; she takes possession of it; like the sun, she clasps it in a circle of light.
    • Ch. 6: The Road to Heaven

The Lily of the Valley (1835)

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  • Le véritable amour est éternel, infini, toujours semblable à lui-même ; il est égal et pur, sans démonstrations violentes ; il se voit en cheveux blancs, toujours jeune de cœur.
    • True love is eternal, infinite, always like unto itself; it is equable, pure, without violent demonstration; white hair often covers the head, but the heart that holds it is ever young.
      • Part II: First Love, as translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
  • Mes avis sur vos relations avec les femmes sont aussi dans ce mot de chevalerie : Les servir toutes, n'en aimer qu'une.
    • My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one."
      • Part II: First Love, as translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

The Atheist's Mass (1836)

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  • Un jeune homme est au crime ce qu'une pièce de cent sous est au X.
    • A young man is to crime what a penny is to the X.
  • Il faisait le ménage comme Philopémen sciait son bois, en communiquant à toutes ses actions la simplicité du faire, en y gardant sa dignité, car il semblait comprendre que le but ennoblissait tout.
    • He did the housework as Philopoemen sawed his wood, communicating the simplicity of doing to all his actions, maintaining his dignity, for he seemed to understand that the goal ennobles everything.

A Daughter of Eve (1839)

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Une Fille d'Ève. translated by R. S. Scott. French text here.
  • Les filles élevées comme vous l'avez été, dans la contrainte et les pratiques religieuses, ont soif de la liberté, désirent le bonheur, et le bonheur dont elles jouissent n'est jamais aussi grand ni aussi beau que celui qu'elles ont rêvé. De pareilles filles font de mauvaises femmes.
    • Girls brought up as you were, in a very strait-laced and puritan fashion, always pant for liberty and happiness, and the happiness they have never comes up to what they imagined. Those are the girls that make bad wives.
      • Ch. 2: Sisterly Confidences
  • La tyrannie produit deux effets contraires dont les symboles existent dans deux grandes figures de l'esclavage antique : Epictète et Spartacus, la haine et ses sentiments mauvais, la résignation et ses tendresses chrétiennes.
    • 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.
      • Ch. 3: The Story of a Happy Woman
  • Les mères de famille devraient rechercher de pareils hommes pour leurs filles : l'Esprit est protecteur comme la Divinité, le Désenchantement est perspicace comme un chirurgien, l'Expérience est prévoyante comme une mère. Ces trois sentiments sont les vertus théologales du mariage.
    • Mothers with marriageable daughters ought to look out for men of this stamp, men with brains to act as protecting divinity, with worldly wisdom to diagnose like a surgeon, and with experience to take a mother’s place in warding off evil. These are the three cardinal virtues in matrimony.
      • Ch. 3: The Story of a Happy Woman
  • L'homme qui peut empreindre perpétuellement la pensée dans le fait est un homme de génie ; mais l'homme qui a le plus de génie ne le déploie pas à tous les instants, il ressemblerait trop à Dieu.
    • The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human.
      • Ch. 3: The Story of a Happy Woman
  • La bonté n'est pas sans écueils : on l'attribue au caractère, on veut rarement y reconnaître les efforts secrets d'une belle âme, tandis qu'on récompense les gens méchants du mal qu'ils ne font pas.
    • Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.
      • Ch. 3: The Story of a Happy Woman
  • Cette bonhomie apparente qui séduit les nouveaux venus et n'empêche aucune trahison, qui se permet et justifie tout, qui jette les hauts cris à une blessure et la pardonne, est un des caractères distinctifs du journaliste. Cette camaraderie, mot créé par un homme d'esprit, corrode les plus belles âmes : elle rouille leur fierté, tue le principe des grandes œuvres, et consacre la lâcheté de l'esprit.
    • 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.
      • Ch. 4: A Man of Note
  • A quinze ans, ni la beauté ni le talent n'existent : une femme est tout promesse.
    • At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman.
      • Ch. 5: Florine
  • D'ailleurs, le suicide régnait alors à Paris ; ne doit-il pas être le dernier mot des sociétés incrédules ?
    • Suicide, moreover, was at that time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?
      • Ch. 7: Suicide
  • Il y a une manière de dire ce mot rien entre amants, qui signifie tout le contraire.
    • Lovers have a way of using this word "nothing" which implies exactly the opposite.
      • Ch. 7: Suicide
  • Nous [les hommes] valons moins que vous [les femmes].
    • A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.
      • Ch. 9: A Husband's Triumph

Pierrette (1840)

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translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. French text here. English text here.

  • Aucun homme ne s'arrache aux douceurs du sommeil matinal pour écouter un troubadour en veste, une fille seule se réveille à un chant d'amour.
    • No man would have torn himself from the comfort of a morning nap to listen to a minstrel in a jacket; none but a maid awakes to songs of love.
      • Ch. I: The Lorrains
  • Comme beaucoup de veuves, elle eut l'idée malsaine de se remarier.
    • Like many widows, she came to the unwise decision of remarrying.
      • Ch. I: The Lorrains
  • La province est la province : elle est ridicule quand elle veut singer Paris.
    • The provinces are provinces; they are only ridiculous when they mimic Paris.
      • Ch III: Pathology of Retired Mercers
  • Les villes se relèvent aussi difficilement que les maisons de commerce de leur ruine.
    • It is as difficult for towns and cities as it is for commercial houses to recover from ruin.
      • Ch. III: Pathology of Retired Mercers
  • Les petits esprits ont besoin de despotisme pour le jeu de leurs nerfs, comme les grandes âmes ont soif d'égalité pour l'action du cœur. Or les êtres étroits s'étendent aussi bien par la persécution que par la bienfaisance ; ils peuvent s'attester leur puissance par un empire ou cruel ou charitable sur autrui, mais ils vont du côté où les pousse leur tempérament. Ajoutez le véhicule de l'intérêt, et vous aurez l'énigme de la plupart des choses sociales.
    • Little minds need to practise despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great souls thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts. Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of most social matters.
      • Ch. IV: Pierrette
  • Les souffrances disposent à la dévotion, et presque toutes les jeunes filles, poussées par une tendresse instinctive, inclinent au mysticisme, le côté profond de la religion.
    • Sufferings predispose the mind to devotion, and nearly all young girls, impelled by instinctive tenderness, are inclined to mysticism, the deepest aspect of religion.
      • Ch. V: History of Poor Cousins in the Home of Rich Ones
  • Pierrette fit comme les gens qui souffrent au delà de leurs forces, elle garda le silence.Ce silence est, pour tous les êtres attaqués, le seul moyen de triompher : il lasse les charges cosaques des envieux, les sauvages escarmouches des ennemis ; il donne une victoire écrasante et complète. Quoi de plus complet que le silence ? Il est absolu, n'est-ce pas une des manières d'être de l'infini ?
    • Pierrette, like all those who suffer more than they have strength to bear, kept silence.Silence is the only weapon by which such victims can conquer; it baffles the Cossack charges of envy, the savage skirmishings of suspicion; it does at times give victory, crushing and complete, — for what is more complete than silence? it is absolute; it is one of the attributes of infinity.
      • Ch. VI: An Old Maid's Jealousy

Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

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Mémoires de deux jeunes mariées.translated by R. S. Scott. French text here. English text here.

 
It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.
 
Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.
 
Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings.
 
The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood widens the circle of our feelings.
  • Le monde offre énormément d’énigmes dont le mot paraît difficile à trouver. Il y a des intrigues multipliées.
    • Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.
      • Part I, ch. IV
  • Qui parle trop veut tromper.
    • A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.
      • Part I, ch. VI
  • L’homme qui nous parle est l’amant, l’homme qui ne nous parle plus est le mari.
    • The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.
      • Part I, ch. VII
  • La politesse cache très-imparfaitement l’égoïsme général.
    • Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.
      • Part I, ch. VII
  • Un pays est fort quand il se compose de familles riches, dont tous les membres sont intéressés à la défense du trésor commun : trésor d’argent, de gloire, de priviléges, de jouissances ; il est faible quand il se compose d’individus non solidaires, auxquels il importe peu d’obéir à sept hommes ou à un seul, à un Russe ou à un Corse, pourvu que chaque individu garde son champ ; et ce malheureux égoïste ne voit pas qu’un jour on le lui ôtera.
    • A country is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is interested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when composed of scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own plot of land, blind in their wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is coming when this too will be torn from them.
      • Part I, ch. XII
  • L’homme subjugué par sa femme est justement couvert de ridicule. L’influence d’une femme doit être entièrement secrète.
    • 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.
      • Part I, ch. XIII
  • Le propre d’un grand homme est de dérouter les calculs ordinaires. Il est sublime et attendrissant, naïf et gigantesque.
    • It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.
      • Part I, ch. XV
  • Oh ! voilà l’amour vrai, sans chicanes : il est ou n’est pas ; mais quand il est, il doit se produire dans son immensité.
    • Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.
      • Part I, ch. XV
  • La vertu, mignonne, est un principe dont les manifestations diffèrent selon les milieux : la vertu de Provence, celle de Constantinople, celle de Londres et celle de Paris ont des effets parfaitement dissemblables sans cesser d’être la vertu.
    • Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue.
      • Part I, ch. XVIII
  • Il y a deux amours : celui qui commande et celui qui obéit ; ils sont distincts et donnent naissance à deux passions, et l’une n’est pas l’autre.
    • The fact is that love is of two kinds — one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other.
      • Part I, ch. XXI
  • L’amour est le plus joli larcin que la Société ait su faire à la Nature ; mais la maternité, n’est-ce pas la Nature dans sa joie ? Un sourire a séché mes larmes.
    • Love may be the fairest gem which Society has filched from Nature; but what is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood? A smile has dried my tears.
      • Part I, ch. XXVIII
  • Le hasard, ma chère, est le dieu de la maternité.
    • Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.
      • Part I, ch. XXVIII
  • Les mondes doivent se rattacher à Dieu comme un enfant se rattache à toutes les fibres de sa mère : Dieu, c’est un grand cœur de mère. Il n’y a rien de visible, ni de perceptible dans la conception, ni même dans la grossesse ; mais être nourrice,... c’est un bonheur de tous les moments.
    • A child is tied to our heart-strings, as the spheres are linked to their creator; we cannot think of God except as a mother's heart writ large. It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment.
      • Part I, ch. XXXI
  • La joie d’une mère est une lumière qui jaillit jusque sur l’avenir et le lui éclaire, mais qui se reflète sur le passé pour lui donner le charme des souvenirs.
    • A mother’s happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.
      • Part I, ch. XXXI
  • Ah ! combien de choses un enfant apprend à sa mère. Il y a tant de promesses faites entre nous et la vertu dans cette protection incessante due à un être faible, que la femme n’est dans sa véritable sphère que quand elle est mère ; elle déploie alors seulement ses forces, elle pratique les devoirs de sa vie, elle en a tous les bonheurs et tous les plaisirs.
    • Ah! how much a mother learns from her child! The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an alliance with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advantage except as a mother. Then alone can her character expand in the fulfillment of all life’s duties and the enjoyment of all its pleasures.
      • Part I, ch. XXXI
  • Un an de lait suffit. Les enfants qui tettent trop deviennent des sots. Je suis pour les dictons populaires.
    • 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.
      • Part I, ch. XXXVIII
  • La maternité comporte une suite de poésies douces ou terribles. Pas une heure qui n’ait ses joies et ses craintes.
    • A mother’s life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.
      • Part I, ch. XLV
  • Une vraie mère n’est pas libre.
    • A mother, who is really a mother, is never free.
      • Part I, ch. XLV
  • La science de la mère comporte des mérites silencieux, ignorés de tous, sans parade, une vertu en détail, un dévouement de toutes les heures.
    • The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.
      • Part I, ch. XLV
  • On porte encore moins facilement la joie excessive que la peine la plus lourde.
    • Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.
      • Part II, ch. L
  • L’amour est profondément égoïste, tandis que la maternité tend à multiplier nos sentiments.
    • The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood widens the circle of our feelings.
      • Part II, ch. LII
  • Il n’y a que des enfants aimants et aimés qui puissent consoler une femme de la perte de sa beauté.
    • Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.
      • Part II, ch. LII
  • La mort rapproche autant qu’elle sépare, elle fait taire les passions mesquines.
    • Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.
      • Part II, ch. LVII

About Catherine de' Medici (1842)

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Power is action, and the elective principle is discussion.There is no policy, no statesmanship possible where discussion is permanent.

Sur Catherine de Médicis. translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. French text here. English text here.

Introduction

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  • En France, et dans la partie la plus grave de l'histoire moderne, aucune femme, si ce n'est Brunehault ou Frédégonde, n'a plus souffert des erreurs populaires que Catherine de Médicis ; tandis que Marie de Médicis, dont toutes les actions on été préjudiciables à la France, échappe à la honte qui devrait couvrir son nom... Catherine de Médicis, au contraire, a sauvé la couronne de France ; elle a maintenu l'authorité royale dans des des circonstances au milieur desquelles plus d'un grand prince aurait succombé.Ayant en tête des factieux et des ambitions comme celles des Guise et de la maison de Bourbon, des hommes commes les deux cardinaux de Lorraine et comme les deux Balafrés, les deux princes de Condé, la reine Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV, le connétable de Montmorency, Calvin, les Coligny, Théodore de Bèze, il lui a fallu déployer les plus rares qualités, les plus précieux dons de l'homme d'État, sous le feu des railleries de la presse calviniste.
    • In France, and that, too, during the most serious epoch of modern history, no woman, unless it be Brunehaut or Fredegonde, has suffered from popular error so much as Catherine de' Medici; whereas Marie de' Medici, all of whose actions were prejudicial to France, has escaped the shame which ought to cover her name... Catherine de' Medici, on the contrary, saved the crown of France; she maintained the royal authority in the midst of circumstances under which more than one great prince would have succumbed. Having to make head against factions and ambitions like those of the Guises and the house of Bourbon, against men such as the two Cardinals of Lorraine, the two Balafrés, and the two Condés, against the queen Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV., the Connetable de Montmorency, Calvin, the three Colignys, Theodore de Beze, she needed to possess and to display the rare qualities and precious gifts of a statesman under the mocking fire of the Calvinist press.
  • Le pouvoir est une action, et le principe électif est la discussion.Il n'y a pas de politique possible avec la discussion en permanence.
    • Power is action, and the elective principle is discussion.There is no policy, no statesmanship possible where discussion is permanent.

Part I: The Calvinist Martyr

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  • Qui dit examen, dit révolte.Toute révolte est, ou le manteau sous lequel se cache un prince, ou les langes d'une domination nouvelle.
    • Whoso says "Investigate" says "Revolt." All revolt is either the cloak that hides a prince, or the swaddling-clothes of a new mastery.
      • Ch. I: A House Which No Longer Exists at the Corner of a Street Which No Longer Exists in a Paris Which No Longer Exists
  • Pierre l'Ermite, Calvin et Robespierre, chacun à trois cents ans de distance, ces trois Picards ont été, politiquement parlant, des leviers d'Archimède.C'était à chaque époque une pensée qui recontrait un point d'appel dans les intérêts et chez les hommes.
    • Peter the Hermit, Calvin, and Robespierre, each at an interval of three hundred years and all three from the same region, were, politically speaking, the Archimedean screws of their age, — at each epoch a Thought which found its fulcrum in the self-interest of mankind.
      • Ch. XIII: Calvin

Part II: The Ruggieri's Secret

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  • Il est certain que pendant le seizième siècle, dans les années qui le précédèrent et le suivirent, l'empoisonnement était arrivé à une perfection inconnue à la chimie moderne et que l'histoire a constatée. L'Italie, berceau des sciences modernes, fut, à cette époque, inventrice et maîtresse de ces secrets dont plusieurs se perdirent.
    • It is certain that during the sixteenth century, and the years that preceded and followed it, poisoning was brought to a perfection unknown to modern chemistry, as history itself will prove. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was, at this period, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are now lost.
      • Ch. II: Schemes Against Schemes
  • A ceux qui ont épuisé la politique, il ne reste plus que la pensée pure.
    • To those who have exhausted statecraft, nothing remains but the realm of pure thought.
      • Ch. V: The Alchemists
  • Quand la religion et la royauté seront abattues, le peuple en viendra aux grands, après les grands il s'en prendra aux riches.
    • When religion and royalty are destroyed the people will attack the nobles; after the nobles, the rich.
      • Ch. V: The Alchemists
  • Les idées dévorent les siècles comme les hommes sont dévorés par leurs passions. Quand l'homme sera guéri, l'humanité se guérira peut-être.
    • Ideas consume the ages as passions consume men. When man is cured, humanity may possibly cure itself.
      • Ch. V: The Alchemists
  • Nos plus cruels ennemis sont nos proches... Les rois n'ont ni frères, ni fils, ni mère.
    • Our most cruel enemies are our nearest in blood!... Kings have neither brothers, nor sons, nor mothers.
      • Ch. V: The Alchemists

Part III: The Two Dreams

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  • La liberté politique, la tranquillité d'une nation, la science même, sont des présents pour lesquels le destin prélève des impôts de sang !
    • Political liberty, the tranquility of a nation, nay, knowledge itself, are gifts on which destiny has laid a tax of blood!

A Bachelor's Establishment (1842)

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We do not sufficiently study the social potentialities which make up the various vocations of life.
 
The body may fear and tremble, while the mind is calm and courageous, or vice versa. This is the key to many moral eccentricities.
Un ménage de garçon, also known as La Rabouilleuse. translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley.French text here. English text here.
  • L’épicier est entraîné vers son commerce par une force attractive égale à la force de répulsion qui en éloigne les artistes.On n’a pas assez étudié les forces sociales qui constituent les diverses vocations. Il serait curieux de savoir ce qui détermine un homme à se faire papetier plutôt que boulanger, du moment où les fils ne succèdent pas forcément au métier de leur père comme chez les Egyptiens.
    • A grocer is drawn to his business by an attracting force quite equal to the repelling force which drives artists away from it. We do not sufficiently study the social potentialities which make up the various vocations of life. It would be interesting to know what determines one man to be a stationer rather than a baker; since, in our day, sons are not compelled to follow the calling of their fathers, as they were among the Egyptians.
      • Ch. I
  • Une veuve a deux tâches dont les obligations se contredisent : elle est mère et doit exercer la puissance paternelle.
    • A widow has two tasks before her, whose duties clash: she is a mother, and yet she must exercise paternal authority.
      • Ch. I
  • La lucidité, de même que les rayons du soleil, n’a d’effet que par la fixité de la ligne droite, elle ne devine qu’à la condition de ne pas rompre son regard ; elle se trouble dans les sautillements de la chance.
    • Lucidity of mind, like the rays of the sun, can have no effect except by the continuity of a direct line; it can divine only on condition of not breaking that line; the curvettings of chance bemuddle it.
      • Ch. IV
  • Il y a deux timidités : la timidité d’esprit, la timidité de nerfs ; une timidité physique et une timidité morale. L’une est indépendante de l’autre. Le corps peut avoir peur et trembler pendant que l’esprit reste calme et courageux, et vice versa. Ceci donne la clef de bien des bizarreries morales. Quand les deux timidités se réunissent chez un homme, il sera nul pendant toute sa vie.
    • There are two species of timidity, — the timidity of the mind, and the timidity of the nerves; a physical timidity, and a moral timidity. The one is independent of the other. The body may fear and tremble, while the mind is calm and courageous, or vice versa. This is the key to many moral eccentricities. When the two are united in one man, that man will be a cipher all his life.
      • Ch. IX
  • La passion qui, remarquez-le, porte son esprit avec elle, peut donner aux niais, aux sots, aux imbéciles une sorte d’intelligence, surtout pendant la jeunesse.
    • The passion, observe, which is able to reflect, gives even to ninnies, fools, and imbeciles a species of intelligence, especially in youth.
      • Ch. IX

A Woman of Thirty (1842)

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Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.

La Femme de trente ans. translated by Ellen Marriage. French text here. English text here.

  • Les jeunes filles se créent souvent de nobles, de ravissantes images, des figures tout idéales, et se forgent des idées chimériques sur les hommes, sur les sentiments, sur le monde ; puis elles attribuent innocemment à un caractère les perfections qu'elles ont rêvées, et s'y confient.
    • Girls are apt to imagine noble and enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections for their daydreams, and put their trust in him.
      • Ch. I: Early Mistakes
  • Il y a beaucoup d'hommes dont le cœur est puissamment ému par la seule apparence de la souffrance chez une femme : pour eux la douleur semble être une promesse de constance ou d'amour.
    • Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.
      • Ch. I: Early Mistakes
  • Un enfant, monsieur, n'est-il pas l'image de deux êtres, le fruit de deux sentiments librement confondus ?
    • What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended?
      • Ch. II: A Hidden Grief
  • La jeune fille n'a qu'une coquetterie, et croit avoir tout dit quand elle a quitté son vêtement ; mais la femme en a d'innombrables et se cache sous mille voiles ; enfin elle caresse toutes les vanités, et la novice n'en flatte qu'une. Il s'émeut d'ailleurs des indécisions, des terreurs, des craintes, des troubles et des orages chez la femme de trente ans, qui ne se rencontrent jamais dans l'amour d'une jeune fille.Arrivée à cet âge, la femme demande à un jeune homme de lui restituer l'estime qu'elle lui a sacrifiée ; elle ne vit que pour lui, s'occupe de son avenir, lui veut une belle vie, la lui ordonne glorieuse ; elle obéit, elle prie et commande, s'abaisse et s'élève, et sait consoler en mille occasions, où la jeune fille ne sait que gémir.
    • A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
      And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations — trouble and storm in the love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl's love. 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.
      • Ch. III: At Thirty Years
  • La sainteté des femmes est inconciliable avec les devoirs et les libertés du monde. Emanciper les femmes, c'est les corrompre.
    • The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.
      • Ch. III: At Thirty Years
  • Les femmes tiennent et doivent toutes tenir à être honorées, car sans l'estime elles n'existent plus. Aussi est-ce le premier sentiment qu'elles demandent à l'amour.
    • Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love.
      • Ch. III: At Thirty Years
  • Mais la raison est toujours mesquine auprès du sentiment ; l'une est naturellement bornée, comme tout ce qui est positif, et l'autre est infini.
    • But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.
      • Ch. III: At Thirty Years
  • L'amour a son instinct, il sait trouver le chemin du cœur comme le plus faible insecte marche à sa fleur avec une irrésistible volonté qui ne s'épouvante de rien.
    • Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.
      • Ch. III: At Thirty Years
  • Rien n'est-il si discret qu'un jeune visage, parce que rien n'est plus immobile. La figure d'une jeune femme a le calme, le poli, la fraîcheur de la surface d'un lac. La physionomie des femmes ne commence qu'à trente ans.
    • Nothing is so discreet as a young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface smoothness, and the freshness of a lake. There is no character in women’s faces before the age of thirty.
      • Ch. VI: The Old Age of a Guilty Mother

Lost Illusions (1837-1843)

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What is Art, monsieur, but Nature concentrated?
 
They had to forget both their misery and their thought which doubled the misery.
  • Qu'est-ce que l'Art, monsieur ? C'est la Nature concentrée.
    • What is Art, monsieur, but Nature concentrated?
      • Part II. Un grand homme de province à Paris (A Distinguished Provincial in Paris) (1839), translated by Ellen Marriage, ch. I, section 5
  • Aussi tous avaient-ils besoin d'oublier et leur malheur et leur pensée qui doublait le malheur.
    • Also, they had to forget both their misery and their thought which doubled the misery.
      • Part II: Un grand Homme de province à Paris (A Great Man of the Provinces in Paris).
  • La Pratique parlait son langage positif à la Théorie dont la parole est toujours au Futur.
    • Practice spoke its positive language to Theory whose word is always to the Future.
      • Part III. Ève et David (Ève and David), later Les Souffrances de l'inventeur (The Inventor's Sufferings).
  • History is of two kinds—there is the official history taught in schools, a lying compilation ad usum delphini; and there is the secret history which deals with the real causes of events—a scandalous chronicle.
    • Part III. Ève et David (Ève and David), later Les Souffrances de l'inventeur (The Inventor's Sufferings).

Splendours and Miseries of Courtesans (1838-1847)

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  • La loi est bonne, elle est nécessaire, l'exécution en est mauvaise, et les mœurs jugent les lois d'après la manière dont elles s'exécutent.
    • The law is good, it is necessary, its execution is poor, and the manners judge the laws based on the manner in which they are executed.
      • Part III. Où mènent les mauvais Chemins (The Ends of Evil Ways), "Ce qu'est un Juge d'instruction pour ceux qui n'en ont pas" ("What a Judge Is for Those Who Do Not Have One") (chapter title).
 
Crime and madness have some similarity.
 
The boldness of truth amounts to combinations forbidden in art — that is how improbable or indecent they are — unless the writer softens them, appeases them, castrates them.
  • Le crime et la folie ont quelque similitude. Voir les prisonniers de la Conciergerie au préau, ou voir des fous dans le jardin d'une maison de santé, c'est une même chose. Les uns et les autres se promènent en s'évitant, se jettent des regards au moins siguliers, atroces, selon leurs pensées du moment, jamais gais ni sérieux ; car ils se connaissent ou ils se craignent. L'attente d'une condamnation, les remords, les anxiétés donnent aux promeneurs du préau l'air inquiet et hagard des fous. Les criminels consommés ont seuls une assurance qui ressemble à la tranquillité d'une vie honnête, à la sincérité d'une conscience pure.
    • Crime and madness have some similarity. Seeing the prisoners of the Conciergerie in the courtyard, or seeing the mad in the garden of a nursing home, it's the same thing. Both walk around, avoiding each other, glancing at each other at least singularly, atrociously, according to their thoughts of the moment, never cheerful or serious; because they know each other or they fear each other. The expectation of a condemnation, remorse, anxieties give walkers in the courtyard a worried and a haggard look of madmen. Consummate criminals alone have an assurance which resembles the tranquility of an honest life, the sincerity of a pure conscience.
      • Part IV. La dernière Incarnation de Vautrin (The Last Incarnation of Vautrin), "Le Préau de la Conciergerie" ("The Courtyard of the Conciergerie") (chapter title).
  • Le fer cède à certains degrés de battage ou de pression réitérée ; ses impénétrables molécules, purifiées par l'homme et rendues homogènes, se désagrègent ; et, sans être en fusion, le métal n'a plus la même vertu de résistance. Les maréchaux, les serruriers, les taillandiers, tous les ouvriers qui travaillent constamment ce métal en expriment alors l'état par un mot de leur techonologie : "Le fer est roui !" disent-ils en s'appropriant cette expression exclusivement consacrée au chanvre, dont la désorganisation s'obtient par le rouissage. Eh bien, l'âme humaine, ou, si vous voulez la triple énergie du corps, du cœur et de l'esprit se trouve dans une situation analogue à celle du fer, par suite de certains chocs répétés. Il en est alors des hommes comme du chanvre et du fer : ils sont rouis.
    • Iron yields to certain degrees of beatings or repeated pressure; its impenetrable molecules, purified by man and made homogeneous, disintegrate; and, without being in fusion, the metal no longer has the same virtue of resistance. Marshals, locksmiths, tool makers, all the workers who constantly work this metal then express the state of it by a word of their technology: "The iron is retted!" they say, appropriating this expression exclusively devoted to hemp, the disorganization of which is obtained by retting. Well, the human soul, or if you will the threefold energy of body, heart, and spirit, is in an iron-like situation, as a result of certain repeated shocks. It is thus with men like hemp and iron — they are retted.
      • Part IV. La dernière Incarnation de Vautrin (The Last Incarnation of Vautrin), "Les Adieux" ("Farewells") (title of chapter).
  • La solitude, c'est le vide ; et la nature morale en a tout autant d'horreur que la nature physique. La solitude n'est habitable que pour l'homme de génie qui la remplit de ses idées, filles du monde spirituel, ou pour le contemplateur des œuvres divines qui la trouve illuminée par le jour du ciel, animée par le souffle et par la voix de Dieu. Hormis ces deux hommes, si voisins du paradis, la solitude est à la torture ce que le moral est au physique. Entre la solitude et la torture il a toute la différence de la maladie nerveuse à la maladie chirurgicale. C'est la souffrance multipliée par l'infini. Le corps touche à l'infini par le système nerveux, comme l'esprit y pénètre par la pensée.
    • Loneliness is emptiness; and moral nature has as much horror of it as physical nature. Solitude is habitable only for the man of genius who fills it with his ideas — daughters of the spiritual world — or for the beholder of divine works who finds it illuminated by the day of heaven, animated by the breath and by the voice of God. Save these two men, so close to paradise, loneliness is to torture what morale is to physique. Between loneliness and torture there is all the difference between nervous illness and surgical illness. It is suffering multiplied by infinity. The body touches infinity through the nervous system, just as the mind enters it through thought.
      • Part IV. La dernière Incarnation de Vautrin (The Last Incarnation of Vautrin), "La Chambre de condamné à mort" ("The Death Row Inmate's Room") (chapter title).
  • Une des obligations auxquelles ne doit jamais manquer un historien des mœurs, c'est de ne point gâter le vrai par des arrangements en apprence dramatiques, surtout quand le vrai a pris la peine de devenir romanesque. La nature sociale, à Paris surtout, comporte de tels hasards, des enchevêtrements de conjectures si capricieuses, que l'imagination des inventeurs est à tout moment dépassée. La hardiesse du vrai s'élève à des combiniasons interdites à l'art, tant elles sont invraisemblables ou peu décentes, à moins que l'écrivain ne les adoucisse, ne les émoude, ne les châtre.
    • One of the obligations which a historian of manners must never fail to do is not to spoil the truth by apparently dramatic arrangements, especially when the truth has taken the trouble to become romantic. Social nature, especially in Paris, involves such chances, such capricious entanglements of conjectures, that the imagination of inventors is at all times exceeded. The boldness of truth amounts to combinations forbidden in art — that is how improbable or indecent they are — unless the writer softens them, appeases them, castrates them.
      • Part IV. La dernière Incarnation de Vautrin (The Last Incarnation of Vautrin), "Dernière Incarnation" ("The Last Incarnation") (chapter title).


Misattributed

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  • He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.
    • Magnam habet cordis tranquillitatem, qui nec laudes curat, nec vituperia. — Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ (ca. 1418), book II, ch. VI, paragraph 2
  • Man has sufficient cause for tears without adding to them by books.
    • Man has sufficient cause for tears without adding to the Ultramarine of Life by Bookes. — [Unnamed] editor's introduction, Love Ballads of the Sixteenth Century (Shop Roycroft, 1897; reprinted 2006), p. 7
  • Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.
    • La solitude est certainement une belle chose, mais il y a plaisir d'avoir quelqu'un qui sache répondre, à qui on puisse dire de temps en temps, que c'est un belle chose. (Solitude is certainly a fine thing; but there is pleasure in having someone who can answer, from time to time, that it is a fine thing.) —Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, Dissertations chrétiennes et morales (1665), XVIII: "Les plaisirs de la vie retirée".

Quotes about Honoré de Balzac

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  • I read everything. I read my way out of the two libraries in Harlem by the time I was thirteen. One does learn a great deal about writing this way. First of all, you learn how little you know. It is true that the more one learns the less one knows. I'm still learning how to write. I don't know what technique is. All I know is that you have to make the reader see it. This I learned from Dostoyevsky, from Balzac. I'm sure that my life in France would have been very different had I not met Balzac. Even though I hadn't experienced it yet, I understood something about the concierge, all the French institutions and personalities. The way that country and its society works. How to find my way around in it, not get lost in it, and not feel rejected by it. The French gave me what I could not get in America, which was a sense of "If I can do it, I may do it." I won't generalize, but in the years I grew up in the U.S., I could not do that. I'd already been defined.
    • 1984 interview in Conversations with James Baldwin edited by Louis H. Pratt and Fred L. Standley (1989)
  • I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?
  • Novelists and short-story writers provide implicitly a critique of their society. The proof of that is the importance given to Balzac's Human Comedy by critics in the Eastern European countries, critics who stem from the extreme left. Balzac himself was an extremely conservative person politically, very reactionary, but in his Comédie Humaine he gave such a truthful, marvellous picture of that very society of which he was a part, that in the eyes of the leftist critics, socialist critics, he gives an unbeatable picture of what was wrong with the bourgeoisie at that time, of the seeds of its own destruction that were within it. A good writer can't help revealing the truth that is in his society and by that token there is a political implication and he is politically committed.
    • 1983 interview in Conversations with Nadine Gordimer edited by Nancy Topping Bazin and Marilyn Dallman Seymour (1990)
  • Quantity and intensity are at once and together his sign.
    • Henry James, "The Lesson of Balzac" (1905), as quoted in The Literature 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Novelists, Playwrights, and Poets of All Time (2008) by Daniel S. Burt, p. 148
  • Balzac said 200 years ago that "behind every great fortune lies a crime," but we know how to create wealth now: the Industrial Revolution created wealth, the Information revolution and our ability to manipulate cyberspace, and to develop concepts and structures in mathematics, and elsewhere. We can create real wealth. So, per se, being wealthy is now not the result of taking from those with less; and yet this historic problem has come roaring back... under the guise of conservatism.
    • David Cay Johnston, "David Cay Johnston; How The One Percent Enrich Themselves at Government Expense" (Jun 23, 2009) Part 1 of an interview hosted by Lawence R. Velvel, Dean, Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, 24:37.
  • Stendhal's a good novelist, but I think the limitations of Stendhal have been rather disastrous. I think you'd do better with Balzac. If you have to imitate a Frenchman.
  • I was exposed to Dickens, Dumas, Victor Hugo, de Maupassant, Balzac.
  • ... You are not, with Balzac, in the Elysian fields; you are sometimes much rather in the Halls of Eblis. But, if you can only apprehend it, there is always Imagination to guide, relieve, console you; and it is the Imagination of a Titan, if not exactly of a God.
  • In fact, the real problem with the thesis of A Genealogy of Morals is that the noble and the aristocrat are just as likely to be stupid as the plebeian. I had noted in my teens that major writers are usually those who have had to struggle against the odds -- to "pull their cart out of the mud," as I put it -- while writers who have had an easy start in life are usually second rate -- or at least, not quite first-rate. Dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Shaw, H. G. Wells, are examples of the first kind; in the twentieth century, John Galsworthy, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Samuel Beckett are examples of the second kind. They are far from being mediocre writers; yet they tend to be tinged with a certain pessimism that arises from never having achieved a certain resistance against problems.
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