Honoré de Balzac: Man

“Man dies in despair while the Spirit dies in ecstasy.”

Honoré de Balzac book Séraphîta

Source: Seraphita (1835), Ch. 3: Seraphita - Seraphitus.

Despair

“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.”

Honoré de Balzac book Séraphîta

Source: Seraphita (1835), Ch. 3: Seraphita - Seraphitus.
Context: 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.

Love , Angels , Nature , Science

“A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.”

Honoré de Balzac book Une fille d'Ève

Nous [les hommes] valons moins que vous
les femmes
Source: A Daughter of Eve (1839), Ch. 9: A Husband's Triumph

“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.”

Honoré de Balzac book Pierrette

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.
Source: Pierrette (1840), Ch. I: The Lorrains.

Love

“A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected at least one woman.”

Honoré de Balzac book Physiology of Marriage

Un homme ne peut se marier sans avoir étudié l'anatomie et disséqué une femme au moins.
Part I, Meditation V: Of the Predestined, aphorism XXVIII.
Physiology of Marriage (1829)

Study

“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.”

Honoré de Balzac

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.
The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), Part II: A Woman Without a Heart

Love , Life , Heart , Happiness

“The more a man judges, the less he loves.”

Honoré de Balzac book Physiology of Marriage

Plus on juge, moins on aime.
Part I, Meditation VIII: Of the First Symptoms http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Physiology_of_Marriage/Part_1/Med_8, aphorism LX.
Physiology of Marriage (1829)

Love

“Man has sufficient cause for tears without adding to them by books.”

Honoré de Balzac

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.
Misattributed

Books , Tear

“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.”

Honoré de Balzac book Une fille d'Ève

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.
Source: A Daughter of Eve (1839), Ch. 3: The Story of a Happy Woman.

“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.”

Honoré de Balzac

Le propre d’un grand homme est de dérouter les calculs ordinaires. Il est sublime et attendrissant, naïf et gigantesque.
Part I, ch. XV.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

“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.”

Honoré de Balzac book Physiology of Marriage

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.
Part II, Meditation Number XII: The Hygiene of Marriage.
Physiology of Marriage (1829)

Law , Sense , Parting

“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.”

Honoré de Balzac book A Woman of Thirty

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.
Source: A Woman of Thirty (1842), Ch. III: At Thirty Years.

Love , Fear , Girl , Lovers

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

Honoré de Balzac

L’homme qui nous parle est l’amant, l’homme qui ne nous parle plus est le mari.
Part I, ch. VII.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

Relationship , Lovers

“Ideas consume the ages as passions consume men. When man is cured, humanity may possibly cure itself.”

Honoré de Balzac

Les idées dévorent les siècles comme les hommes sont dévorés par leurs passions. Quand l'homme sera guéri, l'humanité se guérira peut-être.
Source: About Catherine de' Medici (1842), Part II: The Ruggieri's Secret, Ch. V: The Alchemists.

Men , Age , Idea , Passion

“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.”

Honoré de Balzac

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!
The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), Part II: A Woman Without a Heart

Life , Secret , Fools , Feeling

“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.”

Honoré de Balzac

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 Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), Part II: A Woman Without a Heart

Life , Pleasure , Business

“A young man is to crime what a penny is to the X.”

Honoré de Balzac book The Atheist's Mass

The Atheist's Mass (1836)
Original: (fr) Un jeune homme est au crime ce qu'une pièce de cent sous est au X.

“However the three classes of beings created by the manners are:
The man who works;
The man who thinks;
The man who does nothing.”

Honoré de Balzac

Part I. Généralités (Generalities), Chapter I. Prolégomènes (Prolegomena).
Treatise on Elegant Life (1830)
Original: (fr) 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.

Thinking