<= Previous | May Issues Index | Next =>
Your Quotes for 20 May 2006 - Balzac

The prolific French novelist Honoré de Balzac was born at Tours, France on this day in 1799. Educated to practice law, by his early twenties he had written several novels under pseudonyms while working as a journalist. He bought a publishing firm and a printing company, but both failed and left him with a life-long fear of penury. At age thirty he began to write under his own name, describing in great detail the life of France of his time, writing and rewriting for fourteen to eighteen hours a day. What he styled "La Comédie humaine" (The Human Comedy), which was meant to stand beside Dante's The Divine Comedy, ended up spanning ninety novels and novellas and included over 2,000 characters.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.

The more one judges, the less one loves.

Vocations which we wanted to pursue, and didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.

What is art? Nature concentrated.

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.
     - All from Honoré de Balzac, 1799 - 1850

Would you like to see quotes like these in your mail tomorrow morning? Our 12,000 loyal subscribers hate to miss a day, perhaps you should sign up now! No cost or obligation, just be open to the enlightenment waiting for you among our 22,500+ quotes.