“What is Art, monsieur, but Nature concentrated?”

— Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions, Part II: A Distinguished Provincial in Paris (1839), ch. I, sec. 5

About Honoré de Balzac

1799 – 1850

French novelist, author of "La Comédie humaine".

“Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster which devours everything, that is, familiarity.”

“All human power is a compound of time and patience.”

“Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact.”

“If music be the food of love, play on.”

“Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.”

“If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.”

“The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness.”

“Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.”

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.”