Top 100 Emile Zola Quotes
#1. From the moment I start a new novel, life's just one endless torture. The first few chapters may go fairly well and I may feel there's still a chance to prove my worth, but that feeling soon disappears and every day I feel less and less satisfied.
Emile Zola
#2. When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating.
Emile Zola
#3. They dared not peer down into their own natures, down into the feverish confusion that filled their minds with a kind of dense, acrid mist.
Emile Zola
#4. I am an artist ... I am here to live out loud.
Emile Zola
#5. The thought is a deed. Of all deeds she fertilizes the world most.
Emile Zola
#6. The Empire was on the point of turning Paris into the bawdy house of Europe. The gang of fortune-seekers who had succeeded in stealing a throne required a reign of adventures, shady transactions, sold consciences, bought women, and rampant drunkenness.
Emile Zola
#7. The more grievous the sin, the greater the repentance, God was bidding His time.
Emile Zola
#8. Hortense and Berthe nodded, as though profoundly impressed by the wisdom of their mother's pronouncements. She had long since convinced them of the absolute inferiority of men, whose sole function was to marry and to pay.
Emile Zola
#9. The only basis for living is believing in life, loving it, and applying the whole force of one's intellect to know it better.
Emile Zola
#10. Over all crowds there seems to float a vague distress, an atmosphere of pervasive melancholy, as if any large gathering of people creates an aura of terror and pity.
Emile Zola
#11. It was a peaceful, sunny death, a sleep without end in the calm of the countryside.
Emile Zola
#12. He [Maxime] was twenty, and already there was nothing left to surprise or disgust him. He had certainly dreamt of the most extreme forms of debauchery. Vice with him was not an abyss, as with certain old men, but a natural, external growth.
Emile Zola
#13. Speculation, speculation!' she [Caroline Hamelin] mechanically repeated, struggling with her doubts. 'Ah! the idea of it fills my heart with disturbing anguish.
Emile Zola
#14. Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?
Emile Zola
#15. These young people naturally grow up with ideas different from ours, for they are born for times when we shall no longer be here
Emile Zola
#16. After a time, she believed in the reality of this comedy
Emile Zola
#17. She wanted to live, and live fully, and to give life, she who loved life! What was the good of existing, if you couldn't give yourself?
Emile Zola
#18. With his mouth open, he gave off that alcoholic smell that you get from an old brandy cask when you take out the bung.
Emile Zola
#19. Nothing develops intelligence like travel.
Emile Zola
#20. She was cold by nature, self-love predominating over passion; rather than being virtuous, she preferred to have her pleasures all to herself.
Emile Zola
#21. The day is not far off when one ordinary carrot may be pregnant with revolution.
Emile Zola
#22. The truth is on the march and nothing will stop it.
Emile Zola
#23. It is not I who am strong, it is reason, it is truth.
Emile Zola
#24. On a pitch black, starless night, a solitary man was trudging along the main road from Marchiennes to Montsou, ten kilometres of cobblestones running straight as a die across the bare plain between fields of beet.
Emile Zola
#25. She made one instinctive effort to resist and then yielded, slipping down on to the floor. Not a single word was exchanged. The act was silent and brutal
Emile Zola
#26. Nothing could be more heart rending than this mute and motionless dispair
Emile Zola
#27. For a few moments, raising his arms desperately, the Reverend Mouret implored Heaven. His shoulder-blades cracked, with such fantastic force did he pray. But soon enough his arms fell to his sides, his hopes abashed. From heaven came one of those silences utterly void of hope known to the devout.
Emile Zola
#28. Paris flared
Paris, which the divine sun had sown with light, and where in glory waved the great future harvest of Truth and of Justice.
Emile Zola
#29. They have so smothered me in their middle-class refinement that I don't know how there can be any blood left in my veins. I lowered my eyes, put on a dismal, silly expression, just like them; I was just as dead-and-alive as they were.
Emile Zola
#30. When younger, he had been fun-loving to the point of tedium.
Emile Zola
#31. A new dynasty is never founded without a struggle. Blood makes good manure.
Emile Zola
#32. The couple fell one atop of the other, struck down, finding consolation, at last, in death.
Emile Zola
#33. Respectable people... What bastards!
Emile Zola
#35. Inability, human incapacity, is the only boundary to an art.
Emile Zola
#36. As he talked a good deal, had seen active service, and was naturally regarded as a man of energy and spirit, he was much sought after and listened to by simpletons.
Emile Zola
#37. Her son would be incomparably handsome, good and powerful. He would be the expected Messiah; it is fortunate for humanity that all mothers have this pathetic faith, without it mankind would not have the ever-renascent strength to go on living.
Emile Zola
#38. ...it was absurd to have killed a man for nothing...
Emile Zola
#39. The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.
Emile Zola
#40. The camembert with its venison scent defeats the Marolles and Limbourg dull smells; It spreads its exhalation, smothering the other scents under its surprising breath abundance.
Emile Zola
#42. When you have a sorrow that is too great it leaves no room for any other.
Emile Zola
#43. But his doubts were again coming back to him; when you needed a miracle to gain belief, it means that you are incapable of believing. There is no need for the Almighty to prove His existence.
Emile Zola
#44. She was a virgin and a warrior, disdainful of the male, which was what eventually convinced people that she really must be off her head.
Emile Zola
#45. When there is no hope in the future, the present appears atrociously bitter.
Emile Zola
#46. Perfection is such a nuisance that I often regret having cured myself of using tobacco.
Emile Zola
#47. One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.
Emile Zola
#48. The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.
Emile Zola
#49. Governments are suspicious of literature because it is a force that eludes them.
Emile Zola
#50. O Almighty God, O Divinity, Helpful Power, whoever, whatever Thou mayst be, take pity upon poor mankind and make human suffering cease! All
Emile Zola
#51. All his [Laurent's] great powerful body wanted was to do nothing, to wallow in never-ending idleness and self-indulgence. He would have liked to eat well, sleep well, satisfy his passions liberally, without stirring from one spot or risking the misfortune of a bit of fatigue.
Emile Zola
#52. such a strange look of repugnance and horror
Emile Zola
#53. Violence has never prospered, you can't remake the world in a day. Anyone who promises to change everything for you all at once is either a fool or a rogue!
Emile Zola
#54. The Revolution of 1848 found all the Rougons on the lookout, frustrated by their bad luck, and ready to use any means necessary to advance their cause. They were a family of bandits lying in wait, ready to plunder and steal.
Emile Zola
#55. Never subject to the rules, believing that the correct judgement and healthy nature keep her in the honesty she lived in.
Emile Zola
#56. They talked so, with secret hearts, without needing words, talking of other things ... They could have suddenly continued their confessions aloud, without ceasing to understand each other.
Emile Zola
#57. Since the same human mire remains beneath, does not all civilization reduce itself to the superiority of smelling nice and living well?
Emile Zola
#58. If people can just love each other a little bit, they can be so happy.
Emile Zola
#59. She [Sidonie Rougon] never spoke of her husband, nor of her childhood, her family, or her personal concerns. There was only one thing she never sold, and that was herself.
Emile Zola
#60. The vague torment of ... ambition.
Emile Zola
#61. The road to Lourdes is littered with crutches, but not one wooden leg.
Emile Zola
#62. It was at times like this that one of those waves of bestiality ran through the mine, the sudden lust of the male that came over a miner when he met one of these girls on all fours, with her rear in the air and her buttocks busting out of her breeches.
Emile Zola
#63. Nothing is more irritating than to hear honest writers protest about depravity when one is quite certain that they make these noises without knowing what they are protesting about.
Emile Zola
#64. What will be the death of me are buillabaisses, food spiced with pimiento, shellfish, and a load of exquisite rubbish which I eat in disproportionate quantities.
Emile Zola
#65. It all seemed a hollow sham now - that strict code, that conscientious virtue that condemned her to the sterile joys of pious women! No, no, she'd had enough of that; she wanted to live!
Emile Zola
#66. Ever since the morning, Pierre had beheld many frightful sufferings in that woeful white train. But none had so distressed his soul as did that wretched female skeleton, liquefying in the midst of its lace and its millions.
Emile Zola
#67. Good gracious!" she exclaimed, "she's been more than an hour in there! When the priests set about cleansing her of her sins, the choir-boys have to form in line to pass the buckets of filth and empty them in the street!
Emile Zola
#68. He wept for truth which was dead, for heaven which was void. Beyond the marble walls and gleaming jewelled altars, the huge plaster Christ had no longer a single drop of blood in its veins.
Emile Zola
#69. The stench of the manure that Jean was turning had cheered him up a little. He adored its promise of fertility and was sniffing it with the relish of a man smelling a randy woman.
Emile Zola
#70. Through the centuries, the history of peoples is but a lesson in mutual tolerance.
Emile Zola
#71. Kings may usurp thrones, republics may be established, but the town scarcely stirs. Plassan sleeps while Paris fights.
Emile Zola
#72. He was possessed now with that obsession for the cross in which so many lips have worn themselves away on crucifixes.
Emile Zola
#73. Classical education has deformed everything, and has imposed upon us as geniuses men of correct, facile talent, who follow the beaten track.
Emile Zola
#74. She might have liked to try to strangle him with those slender fingers of hers, but she wanted to make a job of it and this great patience with which she waited for her claws to grow was in itself a form of enjoyment.
Emile Zola
#75. When lovers kiss on the cheeks, it is because they are searching, feeling for one another's lips. Lovers are made by a kiss.
Emile Zola
#76. I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.
Emile Zola
#77. A god of kindness would be charitable to all. Your god of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy.
Emile Zola
#78. When sometimes, behind his back, they called him a tyrant, he merely smiled and uttered this profound observation: If some day I turn liberal, they will say I have let them down.
Emile Zola
#79. When truth is buried, it grows. It chokes. It gathers such an explosive force that on the day it bursts out, it blows up everything with it.
Emile Zola
#80. Art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.
Emile Zola
#81. Sin became a luxury, a flower set in her hair, a diamond fastened on her brow.
Emile Zola
#82. If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.
Emile Zola
#83. Art for me ... is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside of all the rules and all the demands of society.
Emile Zola
#84. Her anger was rekindled.
'You see, I keep it to myself, but, oh! it's more than I can stand. Don't say anything, sir; don't say anything , or I'll explode!'
He said nothing, and she exploded all the same.
Emile Zola
#85. It is not necessary that one should humble oneself to deserve assistance, it is sufficient that one should suffer.
Emile Zola
#86. I am spending delightful afternoons in my garden, watching everything living around me. As I grow older, I feel everything departing, and I love everything with more passion.
Emile Zola
#87. While the storm was erupting, she stayed, staring at it, watching the shafts of lightning, like someone who could see serious things, far away in the future in these sudden flashes of light.
Emile Zola
#88. The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.
Emile Zola
#89. A ruined man fell from her hands like a ripe fruit, to lie rotting on the ground.
Emile Zola
#90. There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.
Emile Zola
#91. As if one killed by calculation! A person kills only from an impulse that springs from his blood and sinews, from the vestiges of ancient struggles, from the need to live and the joy of being strong.
Emile Zola
#92. Has science ever retreated? No! It is Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be forced to retreat.
Emile Zola
#93. I'm a very ordinary man who's worked and fed like everyone else. I'm no longer afraid of dying, but death doesn't seem to want anything to do with me, now that I can see no point in living. I'm afraid he's forgotten me.
Emile Zola
#94. In my view you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it.
Emile Zola
#95. An entire lifetime would not be long enough for you to exhaust the glance of the young harvest-girl.
Emile Zola
#96. He beheld Lourdes, contaminated by Mammon, turned into a spot of abomination and perdition, transformed into a huge bazaar, where everything was sold, masses and souls alike!
Emile Zola
#97. In the midst of these fine gentlemen with their great names and their ancient traditions of respectability, the two women sat face to face, exchanging tender glances, triumphant and supreme in the tranquil abuse of their sex, and their open contempt for the male. And the gentlemen applauded them.
Emile Zola
#98. This sounded the death knell of small family businesses, soon to be followed by the disappearance of the individual entrepreneur, gobbled up one by one by the increasingly hungry ogre of capitalism, and drowned by the rising tide of large companies.
Emile Zola
#99. If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.
Emile Zola
#100. These people came into the world and left it bound to their soil, proliferating on their own dung-hills with slow deliberation like the uncomplicated soul of trees which scatter their seed about their feet, with little conception of any larger world beyond the dun rocks among which they vegetated.
Emile Zola
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