“ The power of calculation amid the complications of life is the sign of a strong will which poets, weaklings, and men who live a purely intellectual life can never counterfeit. ”
Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions (1843). copy citation
| Author | Honoré de Balzac |
|---|---|
| Source | Lost Illusions |
| Topic | power calculation |
| Date | 1843 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translated by Ellen Marriage |
| Weblink | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13159/pg13159.html |
Context
“For a month Lucien's whole time was taken up with supper parties, dinner engagements, breakfasts, and evening parties; he was swept away by an irresistible current into a vortex of dissipation and easy work. He no longer thought of the future. The power of calculation amid the complications of life is the sign of a strong will which poets, weaklings, and men who live a purely intellectual life can never counterfeit. Lucien was living from hand to mouth, spending his money as fast as he made it, like many another journalist; nor did he give so much as a thought to those periodically recurrent days of reckoning which chequer the life of the bohemian in Paris so sadly.”
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