Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a prominent French novelist and playwright, best known for his extensive work, La Comédie humaine, which offers a detailed panorama of French society in the post-Napoleonic era. This monumental series of interlinked novels and stories delves into the lives of a vast array of characters, capturing the complexities of social, political, and economic life in 19th-century France. Balzac's keen observations and intricate characterizations laid the groundwork for modern realism in literature, influencing countless writers, including Marcel Proust and Charles Dickens. Balzac's literary significance extends beyond his narrative style; he was one of the first authors to explore the psychological depth of his characters, presenting them as products of their environment and ambitions. His works, such as Eugénie Grandet and Lost Illusions, reflect the struggles of individuals against the backdrop of a rapidly changing society. Balzac's legacy endures as a foundational figure in the development of the novel, and his insights into human nature and society continue to resonate in contemporary literature.
Famous Quotes
View all 95 quotes“Have you ever plunged into the immensity of space and time by reading the geological treatises of Cuvier? Borne away on the wings of his genius, have you hovered over the illimitable abyss of the past as if a magician's hand were holding you aloft? As one penetrates from seam to seam, from stratum to stratum and discovers, under the quarries of Montmartre or in the schists of the Urals, those animals whose fossilized remains belong to antediluvian civilizations, the mind is startled to catch a vista of the milliards of years and the millions of peoples which the feeble memory of man and an indestructible divine tradition have forgotten and whose ashes heaped on the surface of our globe, form the two feet of earth which furnish us with bread and flowers. Is not Cuvier the greatest poet of our century? Certainly Lord Byron has expressed in words some aspects of spiritual turmoil; but our immortal natural historian has reconstructed worlds from bleached bones.”
“No one ought even to desert a woman after throwing her a heap of gold in her distress! He ought to love her forever! You are young, only twenty-one, and kind and upright and fine. You'll ask me how a woman can take money from a man. Oh, God, isn't it natural to share everything with the one we owe all our happiness to? When one has given everything, how can one quibble about a mere portion of it? Money is important only when feeling has ceased. Isn't one bound for life? How can you foresee separation when you think someone loves you? When a man swears eternal love--how can there be any separate concerns in that case?”
“There is something noble as well as terrible about suicide. The downfall of many men is not dangerous, for they fall like children, too near the ground to do themselves harm. But when a great man breaks, he has soared up to the heavens, espied some inaccessible paradise, and then fallen from a great height. The forces that make him seek peace from the barrel of a gun cannot be placated. How many young talents confined to an attic room wither and perish for lack of a friend, a consoling wife, alone in the midst of a million fellow humans, while throngs of people weary of gold are bored with their possessions.”
Books from the author
