Émile Zola Quotes

The Russians had a great taste for her owing to her embonpoint.

Oh, those bourgeois scum! One day they’d stuff 'em with champagne and truffles till their guts burst!

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!

These military tribunals have, decidedly, a most singular idea of justice. This is the plain truth, Mr. President, and it is terrifying. It will leave an indelible stain on your presidency. I realise that you have no power over this case, that you are limited by the Constitution and your entourage. You have, nonetheless, your duty as a man, which you will recognise and fulfill. As for myself, I have not despaired in the least, of the triumph of right. I repeat with the most vehement conviction: truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it. Today is only the beginning, for it is only today that the positions have become clear: on one side, those who are guilty, who do not want the light to shine forth, on the other, those who seek justice and who will give their lives to attain it. I said it before and I repeat it now: when truth is buried underground, it grows and it builds up so much force that the day it explodes it blasts everything with it. We shall see whether we have been setting ourselves up for the most resounding of disasters, yet to come.

L'idée de la mort, jetée avec désespoir entre deux baisers, revenait implacable et aiguë.

Quando non c’è più speranza nel futuro, il presente si colora di una spaventosa amarezza.

"And, then, if only there were some truth in what the priests say, if only the poor of this world were rich in the next!"
These words were greeted with a burst of laughter, and even the children shrugged their shoulders, for the hard wind blowing from the outer world had taken away all their belief. They harbored a secret fear of ghosts down in the mine, but scoffed at the empty heavens.

There were men so ambitious that they would wipe the masters' behinds to hear them say thank you.

A god of kindness would be charitable to all. Your god of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy...It is not necessary that one should humble oneself to deserve assistance, it is sufficient that one should suffer.

When they got back into the carriage they felt greater strangers than before.

In the sudden change that had come over her heart she no longer recognized herself

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.

I would like to point out how this travesty was made possible, how it sprang out of the machinations of Major du Paty de Clam, how Generals Mercier, de Boisdeffre and Gonse became so ensnared in this falsehood that they would later feel compelled to impose it as holy and indisputable truth. Having set it all in motion merely by carelessness and lack of intelligence, they seem at worst to have given in to the religious bias of their milieu and the prejudices of their class. In the end, they allowed stupidity to prevail.

"‎"Well then! it was the end; his ruin was complete. Even if he mended the cables and lit the fires, where would he find men? Another fortnight's strike and he would be bankrupt. And in this certainty of disaster he no longer felt any hatred of the Montsou bandits; he felt that all had a hand in it, that it was a general agelong fault. They were brutes, no doubt, but brutes who could not read, and who were dying of hunger.

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.