Edgar Saltus

“ The woman who is deformed, yet whose husband considers her figure shapely; the woman who limps, yet whose husband would not have her otherwise; the woman who is old, and yet seems young, are the happiest creatures in the feminine world. The glory of a woman is in making her defects beloved. To forget that a woman who limps does not walk as she should is the effect of momentary fascination, but to love her because she does so is the deification of her infirmity. ”

“ The word which is the easiest to pronounce and the sentiment which is the sweetest to express dies within us when we feel that it is commanded. We abdicate without having reigned.
The art of marriage, as of literature, consists solely in graceful transitions.
Events are never absolute. Their results depend entirely on the individual. Misfortune is a stepping-stone to genius, a treasure to the adroit, but to the weak an abyss. ”

“ There are but few moral wounds which solitude cannot cure.
When a woman is no longer jealous of her husband the end is come; she no longer loves him. Conjugal affection expires in her last quarrel.
A woman who is guided by her head, and not by her heart, is a terrible companion: she has all the defects of a passionate woman, with none of her good qualities; she is without mercy, without love, without virtue, without sex. ”

“ We are obliged to accept the ideas of the poet, the picture of the painter, the statue of the sculptor; but we all of us interpret music according to our grief or our happiness, our hopes or our despair. Where other arts circle our thoughts, and fix them on a determined object, music sends them flitting over the expanses of nature which it has the power to depict.
Thought is the key to every treasure. It brings to us a miser’s joy without his cares. ”

“ If a man is clever he will appear at once to yield to a woman’s whim, and then, while suggesting a reason or two for its non-execution, he will leave to her the right of changing her mind as often as she chooses.
A woman who is happy does not go into society.
Love is not simply a sentiment; it is an art.
Doubt has two faces, of which one turns to the light, and the other to darkness.
A husband should never fall asleep first nor wake up last. ”

“ Man has a horror of solitude, and of all solitudes the purely moral is the most terrible. The early anchorites lived with God. They dwelt in the spiritual world, which is the most populous of all. Misers inhabit a world of fantasy and delight; for the miser has everything, even to his sex, in his brain. Man’s first thought, then, be he leper or galley-slave, is to find an accomplice to his destiny. ”

“ I feel to-day that wealth does not constitute 126 happiness, and that my life here will be to me always a source of the sweetest remembrances. To live as I choose; to work when I will, and after my own manner; to do nothing, even, if I so desire; to fall asleep in a beautiful future; to think of you, and to know that you are happy; to possess the Julie of Rousseau for mistress, La Fontaine and Molière for friends, Racine for master, and Père-Lachaise for promenade!... ”

“ Beauty certainly must be a misfortune to a woman, for its transient charm is the mainspring of the sentiment which it inspires, and the beautiful woman is loved on the same principle that leads a man to marry an heiress. But the woman who is not dowered with the fragile advantages which the children of Adam seek is alone capable of inspiring that mysterious passion which never wanes ”

“ Sooner or later an overwhelming sentiment of the permanence of nature fills the heart, and the thought turns irresistibly to God.
The more illegal the gain, the greater its attraction. Such is the heart of man.
An out-and-out criminal rarely exists, for there are few among us who do not permit themselves one or two good actions, at least. Be it from curiosity, from pride, for the sake of contrast, or by accident, every man has had his moment of kindliness and benevolence. ”

“ Love may be heard in the voice before it is seen in the eyes.
The heart of a woman of twenty-five is as little like that of a girl of eighteen as the heart of a woman of forty is like that of a woman of thirty: each age creates a new woman. ”

“ My lodging cost three sous a day, I burned at night three sous’ worth of oil, and for two sous more I heated my room with charcoal: and in this manner I lived in my aerial sepulchre, working night and day with such pleasure that study seemed the most beautiful theme, the happiest solution, of existence. The calm and silence necessary to the student possess an indescribable something which is as sweet and intoxicating as love, and study itself seems to lend a sort of magic to all that surrounds us. ”

“ For realism as expressed in literature is but the sentiment of the obvious and the true; and in the days when art was a splendid novelty, the first poets, as also the first painters, sought their inspirations directly from the primal source of all reality,—that is, from Nature herself.
Nature, therefore, is the mother of realism, artistically considered, and Homer was its first exponent; for not only was the actuality of his subject never neglected for the purely ideal, but it was also a first experience. ”

“ At his grave in Père-Lachaise is a simple monument, bearing for epitaph that “single name which tells all and makes the passer dream;” and here, at the very spot where Rastignac, after the burial of Père Goriot, hurled his supreme defiance at Paris, Victor Hugo delivered the funeral oration.
“Alas!” he said, “this powerful and tireless worker, this philosopher, this thinker and poet, whose existence was filled with more labors than days, passed among us that life of struggles and combats common in all time to all great men. ”

“ The men play placidly at whist, the women laugh and chat over 89 their worsted work, everything announces harmony and order; but beneath this calm surface passions are at work, and the drama ferments, till at last it bursts forth like the flame of a conflagration.”
“You are in your element, sir. Then your plot is found?”
“Completely. It was chance, our habitual collaborateur, that furnished me with it. I know a family,—whom I will not name,—composed of a husband, a daughter by a first marriage, and a stepmother, still young and childless. The two women adore each other. ”

“ There is no ease in the gestures of a soulless woman.
Instincts are implacable. If we disobey them we are punished. There is one in particular which the animal obeys unhesitatingly: it is the one which commands us to avoid the person who has once injured us, whether the injury was intentional or accidental. The creature that has harmed us once will be always harmful: whatever his rank may be, however nearly he may be related to us, break with him at once; he is an envoy of our evil genius. ”

“ The slow execution of works of genius demands either a ready fortune or a cynical indifference to poverty.
No man can flatter himself that he knows a woman and makes her happy until he sees her continually at his feet.
148 The Orientals sequestrate their women. A woman who loves should sequestrate herself.
A cornice is the sweetest, the most submissive, the most indulgent confidant that a woman can find when she does not dare to look her interlocutor in the face. The cornice of a boudoir is an institution. ”

“ A married woman is a slave who needs a throne.
The grandeur of desires is in proportion to the breadth of the imagination.
A husband who leaves nothing to be desired is lost.
There is no greater incentive to life than the conviction that our death would bring happiness to others.
Where there is no self-respect solitude is hateful. ”

“ As certain families boast of decapitated ancestors, so does a pretty woman become more attractive through the renown of a terrible betrayal. We are pitiless only to vulgar sentiments and commonplace adventures.
No moralist will deny that the well-bred, yet corrupt, are much more agreeable than the strictly exemplary; for, having sins to ransom, they are very indulgent to the defects of others. Virtue, on the contrary, considers herself sufficiently beautiful to dispense with any effort at being agreeable ”

“ In “La Recherche de l’Absolu,” the pursuit of an idea annihilates an entire family. The first is the world of pleasure, an epoch in itself; the second is the world of science, and glitters with brilliant hypotheses. In both instances, an idea, gradually strengthened, becomes a passion and a disorganizing force. In “L’Adieu,” happiness, exalted to the highest degree, becomes a destructive agency. In “Le Réquisitionnaire”, a mother is killed by the violence of maternal affection. In “El Verdugo,” a father is slain by his son that a title may be preserved. ”

“ When we condemn a fellow creature in refusing to him forever our esteem, we have but ourselves to rely on; and even so, have we the right to make our hearts a tribunal, and summon our neighbor there? Where would the law be, in what would the measure of judgment consist? That which is our weakness is perhaps his strength. To so many different beings so many different circumstances for each act, for no two occurrences are ever the same. Society alone has the right to repress its members. ”

“ Believe in me, dear sister; for while I do not despair of being something, some day, I yet have need of a believer. I see now that ‘Cromwell’ had not even the merit of an embryo. As to my novels, they are as poor as the devil, though not half so seductive.”
But when, later on, at the age of twenty-seven, Balzac found himself without position, without a profession, entirely unknown, without resources, and burdened, moreover, with a debt of 120,000 francs,—the result of his disastrous experience as printer and publisher,—he had but his pen with which to conquer poverty and combat the world. ”

“ Although I have not, to my great regret, been possessed of sufficient leisure to cultivate as 119 I should have desired this rare intelligence, which has been called not only to fecundate our own, but also to assist us in spreading the fruits of our genius over a world which awaits them, and which, I may confidently state, would never know them save for the generous and effective assistance of our guest, I may nevertheless be permitted to say to what extent he has, in momentary confidences, permitted me to foresee treasuries of encouragement and rich rewards. ”

“ True love appears in but one of two ways: either at first sight, which is doubtless an effect of second sight; or else in the gradual fusion of two natures, which is the realization of Plato’s androgyne.
A mother’s heart is an abyss in whose depths forgiveness is always to be found.
The practice of religion sometimes causes a mental ophthalmia.
Life is made up of varied accidents, of alternating griefs and joys. Dante’s Paradise, that changeless blue and sublime expression of the ideal, is to be found but in the soul ”

“ A lover is a herald who proclaims a woman’s merit, beauty, or wit. What does a husband proclaim?
147 A woman’s real physiognomy does not begin until she is thirty. Up to that age, the painter finds in her face but pink and white, and a repetition of the uniform and depthless smiles of love and youth.
Science consists in imitating nature.
Through a peculiar mental contraction, women see only the defects in a man of talent, and in a fool but his good qualities. ”

“ The little attentions of the one and the caressing tenderness of the other are admired by all who know them. I, too, thought it charming, at first; then I became surprised, not that a stepdaughter and stepmother should love each other,—for there is nothing unnatural in such an affection,—but that they should love each other so dearly. Excess spoils all things. ”

“ That life of his, full of struggles incessantly renewed, the hourly and truceless combat which he waged, sum up so completely the existence of the literary men of the nineteenth century that it is impossible for us to consider his grand and mournful figure otherwise than as the personification of an entire class. ”

“ Balzac replied very simply, “I never knew the man before he came to Nemours, but if he interests you, I will try to learn something of him.” It was a long time before he was able to find a suitable husband for Mlle. Camille Grandlieu, and rejected all who were suggested to him. “They are not in the same set,” he would say. “Chance alone can supply her with a husband, and chance is a commodity which a novelist should use but sparingly. Reality alone justifies the improbable, and the probable alone is permitted to us.” ”

“ The Odéon is the theatre of tumultuous representations, but never has this terrible battle-field offered such a conglomeration of exclamations and confusing cries. The pit, like a sharp-shooter, took up an ambush behind the substantives and verbs, and slaughtered the play while it maimed the actors, who, brave though wounded, struggled on to the end with a praiseworthy and melancholy courage. At times the comedy, through its sudden flashes of originality 83 and abrupt cannonades of wit, seemed about to rout the enemy and wave aloft a tattered but victorious flag. ”

“ He is a good soldier, but terrible with his inferiors. The old innkeeper motions to the girl to obey. The soldier sits down again. He places one arm tenderly about the girl’s neck, and then, having drunk deeply, he whispers, ‘I will give you a better home than this.’ While they are talking together, inattentive to the others, the door at the back opens. An officer enters, and every one rises, with respect. ”

“ There is not a forest without its significance, not a high-way nor a by-way which does not present analogies with the labyrinth of human thought. What man, whose mind is cultivated or whose heart has suffered, ever walked in a forest that the forest did not speak to him? ”

“ More moral and more imbued with the sentiment of duty, Zeno in certain cases forbade suicide to the stoic. Man, he taught, differs from the brute in that he disposes sovereignly of his person; divested of the right of life and 164 death over himself, he becomes the slave of men and events. To man, therefore, freedom in all things should belong: freedom from passions, which should be sacrificed to duties; freedom from fellow creatures in exhibiting the steel or the poison which disarms attack; freedom from destiny in setting a limit beyond which it can have no effect.... ”

“ Three days ago I married the only woman whom I have loved, whom I love more than ever, and whom I shall love until death. I believe that this union is the recompense that God has held in reserve for me through so many adversities, years of work, and difficulties suffered and overcome. ”

“ Has not some traveler or other told us that wild horses choose the most beautiful among them for leader? Beauty is the spirit of all things. It is the seal which Nature has placed on her most perfect creations. ”

“ Herein are also exposed the petty rivalries, the jealousies born of vicinage, and the family worries, whose increasing force degrades and weakens the most resolute will. The charm of 42 dreams escapes; the prosaic and the matter of fact alone exist; woman reasons, and no longer feels; she calculates where before she gave. Life is now ripened and shaded. ”

“ Herein purity of sentiment is exceptional: it is broken in the play of interests and scattered by the mechanism of the world. Virtue is calumniated, innocence is purchased. Passions become vices, emotions ruinous gratifications; everything is analyzed, bought, and sold. Life is a bazaar; humanity has but two forms, that of the deceiver and the deceived; it is a struggle and a combat, and the victor is he who best throttles society and moulds it to his own ends. The death of relatives is awaited; the honest man is a simpleton ”

“ The resources of Balzac’s genius are perhaps as clearly exhibited in “Eugénie Grandet” as in any of his other works, and the appearance of this romance gave the keynote to the present Realistic school. “Eugénie Grandet” is the conquest of absolute truth in art. It is the drama applied to the most simple events of life; the fusion of the trivial and the sublime, the pathetic and the grotesque. It is a picture of life as it is, and the model of what a novel should be. ”

“ A lover has all the virtues and all the defects that a husband has not.
144 The more one judges the less one loves.
Chance is the great romancer; to be prolific one has but to study it.
Grief as well as pleasure has its initiation.
Apart from the comedian, the prince, and the cardinal, there is a man at once prince and comedian,—a man robed in magnificent vestments. I speak of the poet, who appears to do nothing, yet who reigns above humanity when he has known how to depict it.
Woman’s virtue is perhaps a question of temperament.
To live by the pen is a labor which galley-slaves would refuse ”

“ One of the most important rules in the science of manners is that you preserve an almost absolute silence concerning yourself. Play the comedy, some day, of speaking of your own interests to ordinary acquaintances, and you will see feigned attention swiftly followed by indifference, and then by weariness, until every one has found a pretext for leaving you. ”

“ It costs more to satisfy a vice than to feed a family.
A husband should never permit himself to say anything against his wife in the presence of a third person.
Love prefers contrasts to similitudes.
The sentiment of wrong doing is in proportion to the purity of the conscience, and an act which to one is barely a fault will assume to another the dimensions of a crime.
Woman lives by sentiment, where man lives by action.
Probity, like virtue, should be divided into two classes: to wit, negative and positive. ”