“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

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

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Honoré de Balzac 157

French writer 1799–1850

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“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”

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Hyperion http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5436, Bk. III, Ch. IV (1839).
Variant: Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.
Context: "Ah! this beautiful world!" said Flemming, with a smile. "Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and Heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly; and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."

“Lastly, what is history for? This is perhaps a harder question than the others; a man who answers it will have to reflect rather more widely than a man who answers the three we have answered already. He must reflect not only on historical thinking but on other things as well, because to say that something is `for' something implies a distinction between A and B, where A is good for something and B is that for which something is good. But I will suggest an answer, and express the opinion that no historian would reject it, although the further questions to which it gives rise are numerous and difficult.
My answer is that history is `for' human self-knowledge. It is generally thought to be of importance to man that he should know himself: where knowing himself means knowing not his merely personal peculiarities, the things that distinguish him from other men, but his nature as man. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a man; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of man you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the man you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what he can do until he tries, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.”

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Source: The Idea of History (1946), p. 10

“Man must feel the earth to know himself and recognize his values… God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.”

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“You cannot judge a man's life by the success of a moment, by the victory of an hour, or even by the results of a year. You must view his life as a whole.”

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Context: You cannot judge a man's life by the success of a moment, by the victory of an hour, or even by the results of a year. You must view his life as a whole. You must stand where you can see the man as he treads the entire path that leads from the cradle to the grave — now crossing the plain, now climbing the steeps, now passing through pleasant fields, now wending his way with difficulty between rugged rocks — tempted, tried, tested, triumphant.

“Here’s a strange fact: murder a man, and you feel responsible for his life—’’possessive’’, even. You know more about him than his father and mother; they knew his fetus, but you know his corpse. Only you can complete the story of his life, only you know why his body has to be pushed into the fire before its time, and why his toes curl up and fight for another hour on earth.”

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“I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. My field is the history of thought. Man is a thinking being.”

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“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

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“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

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“You don't know me; you never knew my heart. No man knows my history.”

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Context: You don't know me; you never knew my heart. No man knows my history. I cannot tell it: I shall never undertake it. I don't blame any one for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I could not have believed it myself.... When I am called by the trump of the archangel and weighed in the balance, you will all know me then.

“If you think that Man is free to build a new life while the rest of the world drifts by, then you do not know anything of history!”

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The Sword of Shannara, Cap 2

“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.”

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Honoré de Balzac 157

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