145 quotes
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.
Letters of Two Brides (1841)
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!
Gobseck (1830)
I prefer thought to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity.
Louis Lambert (1832)
Like many widows, she came to the unwise decision of remarrying.
Pierrette (1840)
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.
The Vicar of Tours (1832)
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.
A Woman of Thirty (1842)
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.
Physiology of Marriage (1829)
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?
Séraphîta (1835)
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.
Lost Illusions (1837)
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?
The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831)
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.
However the three classes of beings created by the manners are:
The man who works;
The man who thinks;
The man who does nothing.
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.
Splendours and Miseries of Courtesans (1838)
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.
I am a galley slave to pen and ink.
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.
The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831)
Are not all young men ready to trust the promise of a pretty face and to infer beauty of soul from beauty of feature? An indefinable impulse leads them to believe that moral perfection must co-exist with physical perfection.
Men give way before the power of genius, they hate it and try to blow upon it because it takes without sharing the plunder, but they give way if it persists; in short, they worship it on their knees when they have failed in their efforts to bury it under the mud.
Père Goriot (1835)
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.
The Girl with Golden Eyes (1833)
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.
Séraphîta (1835)