Honore de Balzac Marriage Quotations

When passion is not fed, it changes to need. At this juncture, marriage becomes a fixed idea in the mind of the bourgeois, being the only means whereby he can win a woman and appropriate her to his uses.

Marriage must perforce fight against the all-devouring monster of habit.

Marriage is an institution necessary to the maintenance of society but contrary to the laws of nature.

Marriage is a fight to the death. Before contracting it, the two parties concerned implore the benediction of Heaven because to promise to love each other forever is the rashest of enterprises.

Among even the happiest married couples there are always moments of regret.

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.

Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine.

A woman must be a genius to create a good husband.

Marriage is a fierce battle before which the two partners ask heaven for its blessing, because loving each other is the most audacious of enterprises; the battle is not slow to start, and victory, that is to say freedom, goes to the cleverest.

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.

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 encounters only too rarely.

Can you find a man who loves the occupation that provides him with a livelihood? Professions are like marriages; we end by feeling only their inconveniences.

Squeeze marriage as much as you like, you will never extract anything from it but fun for bachelors and boredom for husbands.

A sacrament by virtue of which each imparts nothing but vexations to the other.

The woman who is about to deceive her husband always carefully thinks out how she is going to act, but she is never logical.

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.

A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.

One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.