Émile Zola Quotes

Est-ce qu'une femme a besoin de savoir jouer et chanter? Ah! mon petit, tu es trop bête... Nana a autre chose, parbleu! et quelque chose qui remplace tout.

From the moment I start a new novel, life’s just one endless torture.

Des morts, des semences, et le pain poussait de la terre.

They were brutes, no doubt, but brutes who could not read, and who were dying of hunger.

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!

"Good gracious!" she exclaimed, "she’s been more than an hour in there! When the priests set about cleansing her sins, the choir-boys have to form in line to pass the buckets of filth and empty them in the street!"

Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy.

Desprezava os discursadores, os astutos que entram na política como quem entra na advocacia, para ganhar dinheiro com a retórica.

On May 5, 1896, he wrote in his diary; “I have no longer anything to say; everything is alike in its horrible cruelty.

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.

From that time onwards he seemed to feel out of place in Plassans. He would wander through the streets like a lost soul. At last he made a sudden decision, and left for Paris.

Lt. Colonel Picquart had carried out his duty as an honest man. He kept insisting to his superiors in the name of justice. He even begged them, telling them how impolitic it was to temporize in the face of the terrible storm that was brewing and that would break when the truth became known.

Meanwhile, in Paris, truth was marching on, inevitably, and we know how the long-awaited storm broke. Mr. Mathieu Dreyfus denounced Major Esterhazy as the real author of the bordereau just as Mr. Scheurer-Kestne was handing over to the Minister of Justice a request for the revision of the trial. This is where Major Esterhazy comes in. Witnesses say that he was at first in a panic, on the verge of suicide or running away. Then all of a sudden, emboldened, he amazed Paris by the violence of his attitude.

It was a house of shadows, where the sunshine was filtered down to a guttering night-light strength between the laths of the window-shutters. (89)

Boredom was at the root of Lazare’s unhappiness, an oppressive, unremitting boredom, exuding from everything like the muddy water of a poisoned spring. He was bored with leisure, with work, with himself even more than with others. Meanwhile he blamed his own idleness for it, he ended by being ashamed of it.