Honore de Balzac Quotes

I grew up when people seemed actually to be hurting themselves for their art. Of course, some of it was phony.

All artists are self-sacrificing human beings, and to become an artist is nothing but to devote oneself to the subterranean gods.

I always found the concept of a tortured artist distasteful.

I always think that art is a form of sacrifice.

It's good to be a martyr for your art, but it's just such a waste of time.

I have never thought that I have sacrificed anything being a writer. That might not be true, maybe I have sacrificed something. Maybe I've given something up, but I can't think of it.

Musicians have to suffer to a certain degree in order to obtain their outlet.

Nor sequent centuries could hitOrbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

I am a great artist and I know it. It's because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue - which is what many people think I am, for that matter.

The truth is, writing is this: hard and boring and occasionally great but usually not.

I have an artistic temperament, which is a really tragic thing.

The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.

All spiritual journeys are martyrdoms

Art is difficult, transient is her reward.

Writing poetry is like always being in love. What masochism! What luxury!

Hear me profess sincerely: had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike, and none less dear than thine and my good Marcius, I had rather have eleven die nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.

With the offspring of genius, the law of parturition is reversed; the throes are in the conception, the pleasure in the birth.

Writing is a refuge from unhappiness, but has its own sorrows.

Poets suffer occasional delusions of angelhood and find themselves condemned to express it in the bric-a-brac tongues of the human world. Lots of them go mad.

I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.

I wanted to be a pariah, because all my heroes were cult artists, people who devoted their lives to poking into very narrow, very deep corners - Erik Satie, Alfred Jarry, Malcolm Lowry - people who suffered in order to express their vision of life.