Émile Zola Quotes

She offered herself to him with that quiet expression which is peculiar to a good-natured courtesan.

If the earth was restful and good to those who loved it, the villagers contaminating it like vermin, those human insects battening on it's flesh, were enough to disgrace it and blight any approach to it.

The passion for defiling things was inborn in her. It was not enough for her to destroy them, she had to soil them too.

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

These young people naturally grow up with ideas different from ours, for they are born for times when we shall no longer be here

they seemed to be greater strangers than before

They have stifled me with their middle-class gentleness, and I can hardly understand how it is that there is still blood in my veins. I have lowered my eyes, and given myself a mournful, idiotic face like theirs. I have led their deathlike life.

He mused on this village of his, which had sprung up in this place, amid the stones, like the gnarled undergrowth of the valley. All Artaud's inhabitants were inter-related, all bearing the same surname to such an extent that they used double-barrelled names from the cradle up, to distinguish one from another. At some antecedent date an ancestral Artaud had come like an outcast, to establish himself in this waste land. His family had grown with the savage vitality of the vegetation, drawing nourishment from this stone till it had become a tribe, then the tribe turned to a community, till they could not sort out their cousinage, going back for generations. They inter-married with unblushing promiscuity.

His remorse was purely physical. Only his body, strained nerves, and cowering flesh were afraid of the drowned man. Conscience played no part in his terrors, and he had not the slightest regret about killing Camille; in his moments of calm, when the spectre was not present, he would have committed the murder over again had he thought his interests required it.

Etre pauvre à Paris, c'est être pauvre deux fois.

How evil life must be if it were indeed necessary that such imploring cries, such cries of physical and moral wretchedness, should ever and ever ascend to heaven!

She 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.

The ground was trembling under their feet, and they clung to the resolutions made in their calmer hours so as not to sink into the abyss.

General Billot directed the judges in his preliminary remarks, and they proceeded to judgment as they would to battle, unquestioningly. The preconceived opinion they brought to the bench was obviously the following: "Dreyfus was found guilty for the crime of treason by a court martial; he therefore is guilty and we, a court martial, cannot declare him innocent. On the other hand, we know that acknowledging Esterhazy's guilt would be tantamount to proclaiming Dreyfus innocent." There was no way for them to escape this rationale. So they rendered an iniquitous verdict that will forever weigh upon our courts martial and will henceforth cast a shadow of suspicion on all their decrees. The first court martial was perhaps unintelligent; the second one is inescapably criminal.

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