Quotes from The Wild Ass's Skin

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

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

“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, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

“Notre conscience est un juge infaillible, quand nous ne l'avons pas encore assassinée.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from 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, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

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

“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, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

“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, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

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

“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, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

“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, quote from 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, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

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

“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, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

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

“La vida sencilla y mecánica conduce a una cordura insensata ahogando nuestra inteligencia con el trabajo, en tanto que la vida pasada en el vacío de las abstracciones o en los abismos del mundo moral lleva a una loca cordura. En una palabra: matar los sentimientos para vivir hasta muy viejos o morir jóvenes aceptando el martirio de las pasiones. Esta es nuestra sentencia.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

“La sociedad, el mundo, nuestras costumbres, vistos de cerca, me han revelado el peligro de mi creencia inocente y la superfluidad de mis fervientes trabajos. Estas provisiones son inútiles al ambicioso. ¡El que persigue la fortuna ha de llevar poco peso en la mochila!”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

“Los hombres que están en el Poder tienen tanta necesidad de creer en el mérito reconocido, en el talento descarado, como en el sabio hay puerilidad en creer en las recompensas humanas.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

“¡Nada en los lenguajes humanos, ninguna traducción del pensamiento hecha con ayuda de los colores, los mármoles, las palabras o los sonidos sabría expresar el nervio, la verdad, la finitud, lo súbito del pensamiento en el alma!”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

“El amor pasa por transformaciones infinitas antes de mezclarse para siempre con nuestra vida y de teñirse para siempre de su color de llama. El secreto de esta infusión imperceptible se escapa al análisis del artista.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

“Toujours en opposition avec lui-même, trompant ses espérances par ses maux présents, et ses maux par un avenir qui ne lui appartient pas, l'homme imprime à tous ses actes le caractère de l'inconséquence et de la faiblesse. Ici-bas rien n'est complet que le malheur.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

“El amor es una fuente ingenua, que sale de su lecho de berros, de flores, de arena, que, arroyo o río, muda de naturaleza y aspecto a cada onda y se arroja a un inconmensurable océano en que los espíritus incompletos ven la monotonía, en que las almas grandes se entregan a contemplaciones perpetuas. ¡Cómo osar describir esas tintas transitorias del sentimiento, esas naderías que tanto precio tienen, esas palabras cuyo acento agota los tesoros del lenguaje, esas miradas más fecundas que los más bellos poemas!”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

“El amor nos da una especia de religión para nosotros mismos, respetamos en nosotros otra vida; se hace entonces el más horrible de los males, el mal con una esperanza, una esperanza que nos hace aceptar los tormentos.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

“Ver a tu amante dormida, risueña en su sueño apacible bajo tu protección, amándote hasta en sueños, en el momento en que la criatura parece dejar de ser, y ofreciéndote todavía una boca muda que en el sueño te habla del último beso; ver una mujer confiada, medio desnuda, aunque envuelta en su amor como en un manto, y casta en el seno del desorden; admirar sus vestidos esparcidos, una media de seda, quitada rápidamente la noche anterior para complacerte, un ceñidor desabrochado que te confiesa una fe infinita, ¿no es un gozo sin nombre? Ese ceñidor es un poema entero, la mujer a la que defendía ya no existe, es tuya, se ha hecho tú. Si le eres infiel en lo sucesivo, te hieres a ti mismo.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

“Si alguna ave de las que se hallan en el corral está enferma o lastimada, las otras la acometen a picotazos, la despluman y la matan.
Fiel a esta ley fundamental del egoísmo, el mundo prodiga sus rigores a las miserias bastante osadas para venir a arrostrar sus fiestas, para entristecer sus placeres. El que sufre en el cuerpo o el alma, carece de dinero o de poder, es un paria. ¡Que se quede en su desierto! Si traspasa sus límites, encuentra en todas partes el invierno; miradas, modales, palabras, corazones fríos. ¡Dichoso si no recibe insultos en donde debía hallar consuelo! ¡Moribundos, quédense en sus lechos abandonados!”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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