Émile Zola Quotes

We are like books. Most people only see our cover, the minority read only the introduction, many people believe the critics. Few will know our content

He wept for truth which was dead, for heaven which was void. Beyond the marble walls and gleaming jewelled altars, the huge plaster Christ had no longer a single drop of blood in its veins.

There Albine lay, panting, exhausted by love, her hands clutched closer and closer to her heart, breathing her last. She parted her lips, seeking the kiss which should obliterate her, and then the hyacinths and tuberoses exhaled their incense, wrapping her in a final sigh, so profound that it drowned the chorus of roses, and in this culminating gasp of blossom, Albine was dead.

Her anger was rekindled.
'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!'
He said nothing, and she exploded all the same.

Since the same human mire remains beneath, does not all civilisation reduce itself to the superiority of smelling nice and living well?

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

With other women he had not been able to touch their flesh without experiencing the desire to devour it, as though ravenous with an abominable hunger to butcher them. But this one, could he then love her, and not kill her?

Living in musty shadows and dismal, oppressive silence, Thérèse could see her whole life stretching out before her totally void, bringing night after night the same cold bed and morning after morning the same empty day.

As if one killed by calculation! A person kills only from an impulse that springs from his blood and sinews, from the vestiges of ancient struggles, from the need to live and the joy of being strong.

She [Sidonie Rougon] 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.

Nothing is more irritating than to hear honest writers protest about depravity when one is quite certain that they make these noises without knowing what they are protesting about.

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.

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.

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.

"When sometimes, behind his back, they called him a tyrant, he merely smiled and uttered this profound observation: "If some day I turn liberal, they will say I have let them down.