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 one can still take Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempre at Balzac's own estimate, one has lived in vain.
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"A Chance Meeting" ~ First published in The Atlantic Monthly (1933)Willa Cather
People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can’t know. It only knows when it is no longer able to do — after forty. Between twenty and forty the will of the child to do gets stronger, more dangerous, but it has not begun to learn to know yet. Since his capacity to do is forced into channels of evil through environment and pressures, man is strong before he is moral. The world’s anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty.
William Faulkner
“I don’t have to be a gentleman,” said Balzac. “I am an artist.”
Orson Scott Card
Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.
Anthony Trollope
Balzac says that many young husbands are so ignorant of women that they make him think of orang-outangs trying to play the violin.
Andre Maurois
His consolation in those hours when he was most uncharitable to himself is that taken at his very worst he was at least still worthy of being a character in a novel by Balzac, win one day, lose the next, and do it with boom! and baroque in the style.
Norman Mailer
Cather, Willa
Catherine II of Russia
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