Emile Zola Quotes

No, the only good in life lay in not being - or, if one had to be, then in being a tree, a stone, or even less than that, the grain of sand that cannot bleed beneath the grinding heel of a passer-by.

Words failed him again; he began to stammer in his unsuccessful attempt to express the first vague stirrings of the future he could feel within himself. While he finished feverishly brushing in the black velvet jacket, there was a long silence.

I believe that all is illusion and vanity outside the treasure of truths slowly accumulated, and which will never again be lost. I believe that the sum of these truths, always increasing, will at last confer on man incalculable power and peace, if not happiness. Yes, I believe in the final triumph of life.

Sin became a luxury, a flower set in her hair, a diamond fastened on her brow.

Sometimes she was seized with hallucinations and thought she was buried in some vault together with a lot of puppet-like corpses which nodded their heads and moved their legs and arms when you pulled the strings.

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.

Kings may usurp thrones, republics may be established, but the town scarcely stirs. Plassan sleeps while Paris fights.

Why then should money be blamed for all the dirt and crimes it causes? For is love less filthy - love which creates life?

I have but one passion—that of light. This I ask for in the name of humanity, which has suffered so much, and which has a claim to happiness. My passionate protest is but the cry of my soul. Let anyone who dares bring me before an Assize Court, and let the inquiry be held in broad daylight. I am waiting.

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.

Things...oh! you can't imagine what they were like! Things that get you here, somehow, at the back of your head, like a woman breathing down your neck...Not like a kiss...No, more insubstantial that that,,,a breath, a soft, faint breath. Oh! it's like...like feeling your soul going out of your body!

He was possessed now with that obsession for the cross in which so many lips have worn themselves away on crucifixes.

A ruined man fell from her hands like a ripe fruit, to lie rotting on the ground.

Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy.

I know nothing sadder than a hunchback in love or an ugly woman full of romantic ideals.

The obligation of a writer is to live out loud.

The truth is on the march and nothing will stop it.

Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they've been taught is wrong!

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!

Now we need something else...and I should be the one person to be reckoned with!

Never subject to the rules, believing that the correct judgement and healthy nature keep her in the honesty she lived in.