The Wild Ass's Skin Quotes

“Il ya toute une vie dans une heure d'amour.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“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.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“Yes, I can understand that a man might go to gambling table - when he sees that all that lies between himself and death is his last crown”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“He looked like some plant bleached by darkness.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“Journalism, look you, is the religion of modern society.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“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.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“საზოგადოებრივი აზრი? - ეს ხომ ყოველ მეძავ ქალზე უფრო გარყვნილი არსებაა.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“Hélas! Nous ne manquons jamais d'argent pour nos caprices, nous ne discutons que le prix des choses utiles ou nécessaires; nous jetons l'or avec insouciance à des danseuses, et nous marchandons un ouvrier dont la famille affamée attend la paiement d'un mémoire. Combien de gens ont un habit de cent francs, un diamant à la pomme de leur canne, et dinent à vingt-cinque sous? Il semble que nous n'achetions jamais assez chèrementles plaisirs de la vanité”
― Honoré de Balzac, La Peau De Chagrin

“Happy?" asked Aquilina, with dreadful look, and a smile full of pity and terror. "Ah, you do not know what it is to be condemned to a life of pleasure.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“Il existe je ne sais quoi de grand et d’épouvantable dans le suicide. Les chutes d’une multitude de gens sont sans danger, comme celles des enfants qui tombent de trop bas pour se blesser; mais quand un grand homme se brise, il doit venir de bien haut, s’être élevé jusqu’aux cieux, avoir entrevu quelque paradis inaccessible. Implacables doivent être les ouragans qui le forcent à demander la paix de l’âme à la bouche d’un pistolet… Chaque suicide est un poème sublime de mélancolie.”
― Honoré de Balzac, La Peau De Chagrin

“Notre conscience est un juge infaillible, quand nous ne l'avons pas encore assassinée.”
― Honoré de Balzac, La Peau De Chagrin

“Emile was a journalist who had acquired more reputation by doing nothing than others from a successful productive career. A bold, biting, spirited critic, he possessed all the qualities of his defects. Jovial and outspoken, he would blister a friend to his face with a thousand sarcasms but, behind his back, he would defend him with courage and loyalty. He made fun of everything, his own prospects included. Always short of money, he remained, like all men with a future before them, wallowing in inexpressible idleness, condensing a whole book into one epigram for the benefit of people who were incapable of putting one witticism into a whole book. Lavish of promises that he never kept, he had made his fortune and reputation into a cushion on which he slept, thus running the risk of coming to his senses, as an old man, in an almshouse. With all that, keeping faith with his friends to the point of death, a swaggering cynic and as simple-hearted as a child, he worked only by fits and starts or under the spur of necessity.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“El error de los hombres superiores es gastar los años de su juventud en hacerse dignos de la estimación de los demás.”
― Honoré de Balzac, La Piel de Zapa

“Existe un algo grande y espantoso en el suicidio. Las caídas de muchas personas no son peligrosas, son como las de los niños, que caen tan a ras del suelo que no se hacen daño; mas cuando un gran hombre se estrella, ha de venir de muy alto, haberse elevado hasta los cielos, haber entrevisto algún paraíso inaccesible. ¡Cuán implacables han de ser los huracanes que le fuerzan a pedir la paz del alma a la boca de una pistola! ¡Cuántos talentos jóvenes encerrados en una buhardilla languidecen y mueren por falta de un amigo, de una mujer consoladora, en el seno de un millón de seres, en presencia de una muchedumbre harta de oro y que se aburre!”
― Honoré de Balzac, La Piel de Zapa

“Le sentiment que l'homme supporte le plus difficilement est la pitié, surtout quand il la mérite. La haine est un tonique, elle fait vivre, elle inspire la vengeance; mais la pitié tue, elle affaiblit encore notre faiblesse.”
― Honoré de Balzac, La Peau De Chagrin

“Surely a man must be in a parlours state to excite pity, extremely weak to inspire sympathy, or very evil-looking to make a soul tremble in a den like this, where pain must hold its tongue, poverty remain cheerful, and despair retain its self respect.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“I want Pauline to love me!” he cried next morning, looking at the talisman the while in unspeakable anguish.

The skin did not move in the least; it seemed to have lost its power to shrink; doubtless it could not fulfil a wish fulfilled already.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“Con người luôn luôn mâu thuẫn với mình, lấy những đau khổ trước mắt để đánh lừa hi vọng mai sau, và xoa dịu những đau khổ hiện tại bằng một tương lai không thuộc quyền mình, mọi hành động của họ đều mang dấu ấn của tính không nhất quán và nhu nhược. Dưới trần gian này không gì trọn vẹn hơn sự khổ hạnh.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Miếng Da Lừa

“Basta a un joven encontrar una mujer que no le ama o que le quiere demasiado para que su vida quede desordenada. La felicidad engulle nuestras fuerzas como el infortunio mata nuestras virtudes.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“La verdadera pasión se expresa con gritos, con suspiros fastidiosos para el hombre frío.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“Una mujer es coqueta mientras no ama.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“როცა ქალს არავინ უყვარს, იგი კეკლუცობს...”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“But we couldn't find you anywhere, — neither on the police records at Sainte-Pélagie nor those of La Force. Ministries, theatres, convents, cafes, libraries, juries, newspaper offices, restaurants, greenrooms, — in short, every possible hole and corner of Paris, good and bad, — have been explored; we were bewailing the loss of a man gifted with genius enough to compel us to look for him either in a palace or a prison. We talked of getting yon canonized as a July hero, and, on my word of honor, we did regret you.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“Possessing me thou shalt possess all things.
But thy life is mine, for God has so willed it.
Wish, and thy wishes shall be fulfilled;
But measure thy desires, according
To the life that is in thee.
This is thy life,
With each wish I must shrink
Even as thy own days.
Wilt thou have me? Take me.
God will hearken unto thee.
So be it!”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“The feeling of pity in others is very difficult for a man to bear, and it is hardest of all when the pity is deserved.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“The tranquility and peace that a scholar needs is something as sweet and as exhilarating as love.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“The vigour of a nation in its origin was in a way physical, unitary, and crude; then as aggregations increased, government advanced by a decomposition of the primitive rule, more or less skillfully managed. For example, in remote ages national strength lay in theocracy, the priest held both the sword and censer; a little later there were two priests, the pontiff and the king. To-day our society, the latest word of civilisation, has distributed power according to the number of combinations, and we come to the forces called business, thought, money, and eloquence. Authority thus divided is steadily approaching a social dissolution, with interest as its one opposing barrier. We depend no longer on either religion or physical force, but upon intellect. Can a book replace a sword? Can discussion substitute for action? That is the question'".”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“Власть, над которой безнаказанно глумятся, близка к гибели.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Шагреневая кожа: Роман (Проверено временем)

“Увы, на прихоти у нас всегда найдутся деньги, мы скупимся только на затраты полезные и необходимые.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Шагреневая кожа: Роман (Проверено временем)

“Уголовный кодекс запрещает нам любить скотов, — насмешливо проговорила величественная Акилина. — Я думала, ты снисходительнее к военным! — со смехом воскликнула Евфрасия.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Шагреневая кожа: Роман (Проверено временем)