Quotes from book
Gobseck

Name: Gobseck
Author: Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac Original title Gobseck (French, 1830)

Gobseck is an 1830 novella by French author Honoré de Balzac and included in the Scènes de la vie privée section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine. Gobseck first appeared in outline form in La Mode in March 1830 under the title l’Usurier , and then in August 1830 in the periodical Le Voleur. The actual novel appeared in a volume published by Mame-Delaunay under the title les Dangers de l’inconduite. This novel would appear in 1835 under the title of Papa Gobseck in a volume published by Madame Charles-Béchet. The definitive title of Gobseck would appear in 1842 in the Furne edition of La Comédie humaine.

“Life — is it anything more than a machine to which money imparts the motion?”

Honoré de Balzac book Gobseck

La vie n'est-elle pas une machine à laquelle l'argent imprime le mouvement?
p. 26, 1921 édition https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158007362832;view=1up;seq=63
Gobseck (1830)

“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!”

Honoré de Balzac book Gobseck

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!
p. 72, 1921 édition https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158007362832;view=1up;seq=108
Gobseck (1830)