Balzac

She saw herself as part of a larger tradition that includes Honore de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, and Thomas Mann.

Okay, not everything in this book meets the standards of realism as practiced by Balzac and Zola.

So any list of the “essential” Balzac inevitably omits a handful of great works.

As I said, Balzac wrote about an epoch that is curiously like our own.

Balzac was the great novelist of money, social climbing, and power.

Balzac seems to have observed the society of his day less than he contributed to form a new one.

I think I can see two reasons for this particular strength of Balzac's genius.

With such a faculty Balzac could not be, like Edgar Poe, merely a narrator of nightmares.

Ever since their grandfather, the soldier Balzac, married a viscontessa at Milan that family hold their heads too high.

Sainte-Beuve and Balzac were two of the earliest of her literary friends, among whom she numbered also Heine.