It is scarcely exaggeration to say that if one is not a little mad about Balzac at twenty, one will never live; and if at forty on...e can still take Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempre at Balzac's own estimate, one has lived in vain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Hom...er have all written about the same things, and if they had lived one thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn't have needed anyone since.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your appro...aching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The prose method might be described as that where the writer provides a complete description of all those material factors in the ...environment which condition his characters. The poetic method sees the centre of consciousness as the point where all that is significant in the surrounding world becomes aware and transformed; the prose method requires a description of that world in order to explain the characteristics of the people in it. The hero of the poetic method is Rimbaud; of the prose method, Balzac.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is l...argely an invention of Balzac.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They [twin beds] are the most stupid, the most perfidious, and the most dangerous invention in the world. Shame and a curse on who... thought of them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To have one's mother-in-law in the country when one lives in Paris, and vice versa, is one of those strokes of luck that one encou...nters only too rarely.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A wife is property that one acquires by contract, she is transferable, because possession of her requires title; in fact, woman is..., so to speak, only man's appendage; consequently, slice, cut, clip her, you have all rights to her.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is beyond a doubt that during the sixteenth century, and the years immediately preceding and following it, poisoning had been b...rought to a pitch of perfection which remains unknown to modern chemistry, but which is indisputably proved by history. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was at that time, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are lost.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »