Émile Zola Quotes

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.

Monsieur Josserand died very quietly—a victim of his own honesty. He had lived a useless life, and he went off, worthy to the last, weary of all the petty things in life, done to death by the heartless conduct of the only human beings he had ever loved.

They again kissed each other and fell asleep. The patch of light on the ceiling now seemed to be assuming the shape of a terrified eye, that stared wildly and fixedly upon the pale, slumbering couple who reeked with crime beneath their very sheets, and dreamt they could see a rain of blood falling in big drops, which turned into golden coins as they plashed upon the floor.

In cima alla via Guénégaud, venendo dalla strada lungo la Senna, si trova il passaggio del Ponte Nuovo, una specie di corridoio stretto e oscuro che va dalla via Mazarino alla via della Senna. Quel passaggio ha, al massimo, trenta passi di lunghezza e due di larghezza; è selciato di pietre giallastre, consunte, sconnesse, che trasudano sempre un'acre umidità; la vetrata che lo ricopre, tagliata ad angolo retto, è nera di sporcizia.
Nei bei giorni d'estate, quando un ardente sole incendia le vie, un chiarore biancastro cade dai vetri sporchi e si trascina miseramente nel passaggio. Nei brutti giorni d'inverno, nelle mattinate di nebbia, i vetri gettano soltanto oscurità sulle pietre viscide, oscurità sporca e ignobile.

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.

It was always the same; other people gave up loving before she did. They got spoilt, or else they went away; in any case, they were partly to blame. Why did it happen so? She herself never changed; when she loved anyone, it was for life. She could not understand desertion; it was something so huge, so monstrous that the notion of it made her little heart break.

It was the noisome fruit of ignorance and filth, ever recurring, the Black Death, the Great Plague, which stride like giant skeletons through past centuries, scything down the pale, sad people of the countryside.

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

The thing is, work has simply swamped my whole existence. ... It’s like a germ planted in the skull that devours the brain, spreads to the trunk and the limbs, and destroys the entire body in time.

Ce fut un naïf, un naïf sublime, resté sur le seuil du temple, à genoux devant des cierges qu’il prenait de loin pour des étoiles.

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.

Everything is only a dream.

Thérèse, residing in damp obscurity, in gloomy, crushing silence, saw life expand before her in all its nakedness, each night bringing the same cold couch, and each morn the same empty day.

There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.

Her anger was rekindled. </br> "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!" </br> He said nothing, and she exploded all the same.