Letters of Two Brides Quotes

“En toute autre chose, la duplicité, le manque de foi, les promesses inexécutées rencontrent des juges, et les juges infligent des châtiments; mais il n'en est pas ainsi pour l'amour, qui doit être à la fois la victime, l'accusateur, l'avocat, le tribunal et le bourreau: car les plus atroces perfidies, les plus horribles crimes demeurent inconnus, se commettent l'âme à âme sans témoins, et il est dans l'intérêt bien entendu de l'assassiné de se taire. L'amour a donc son code à lui, sa vengeance à lui: le monde n'a rien à y voir.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Memoires de Deux Jeunes Mariees - Melmoth Reconcilie

“I see in marriage, as it at present exists, two opposing forces which it was the task of the lawgiver to reconcile. ... The laws were made by old men—any woman can see that—and they have been prudent enough to decree that conjugal love, apart from passion, is not degrading, and that a woman in yielding herself may dispense with the sanction of love, provided the man can legally call her his. In their exclusive concern for the family they have imitated Nature, whose one care is to propagate the species.

Formerly I was a person, now I am a chattel. Not a few tears have I gulped down, alone and far from every one. ...”
― Honoré de Balzac, Letters of Two Brides

“Clarissa Harlowe”
― Honoré de Balzac, Letters of Two Brides

“After the snows of Siberia, a man may well find merit in these black eyes of mine, which, as you used to say, ripened any fruit that I gazed upon.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Memoirs of Two Young Wives