Emile Zola Quotes

“The truth is on the march and nothing will stop it.”

— Emile Zola

If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.

— Emile Zola

“One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.”

— Emile Zola

The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.

— Emile Zola

I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.

— Emile Zola

The thought is a deed. Of all deeds she fertilizes the world most.

— Emile Zola

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

— Emile Zola

Nothing develops intelligence like travel.

— Emile Zola

“In love as in speculation there is much filth; in love also, people think only of their own gratification; yet without love there would be no life, and the world would come to an end.”

— Emile Zola

Over all crowds there seems to float a vague distress, an atmosphere of pervasive melancholy, as if any large gathering of people creates an aura of terror and pity.

— Emile Zola

“From the moment I start a new novel, life's just one endless torture. The first few chapters may go fairly well and I may feel there's still a chance to prove my worth, but that feeling soon disappears and every day I feel less and less satisfied.”

— Emile Zola

“Let us eat, drink and satisfy our coarse appetites, but let us keep our souls sacred and apart.”

— Emile Zola

“When truth is buried, it grows. It chokes. It gathers such an explosive force that on the day it bursts out, it blows up everything with it.”

— Emile Zola

“A ruined man fell from her hands like a ripe fruit, to lie rotting on the ground.”

— Emile Zola

“Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like.”

— Emile Zola

“If people can just love each other a little bit, they can be so happy.”

— Emile Zola

“It is not necessary that one should humble oneself to deserve assistance, it is sufficient that one should suffer.”

— Emile Zola

“The day is not far off when one ordinary carrot may be pregnant with revolution.”

— Emile Zola

“Through the centuries, the history of peoples is but a lesson in mutual tolerance.”

— Emile Zola

“She was cold by nature, self-love predominating over passion; rather than being virtuous, she preferred to have her pleasures all to herself.”

— Emile Zola

“It all seemed a hollow sham now - that strict code, that conscientious virtue that condemned her to the sterile joys of pious women! No, no, she'd had enough of that; she wanted to live!”

— Emile Zola

“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!”

— Emile Zola

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

— Emile Zola

“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!”

— Emile Zola

“Don't go looking at me like that because you'll wear your eyes out.”

— Emile Zola

The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.

— Emile Zola

“I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.”

— Emile Zola

“Inability, human incapacity, is the only boundary to an art.”

— Emile Zola

When lovers kiss on the cheeks, it is because they are searching, feeling for one another's lips. Lovers are made by a kiss.

— Emile Zola

“I am spending delightful afternoons in my garden, watching everything living around me. As I grow older, I feel everything departing, and I love everything with more passion.”

— Emile Zola

They dared not peer down into their own natures, down into the feverish confusion that filled their minds with a kind of dense, acrid mist.

— Emile Zola

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

— Emile Zola

“When you have a sorrow that is too great it leaves no room for any other.”

— Emile Zola

“The camembert with its venison scent defeats the Marolles and Limbourg dull smells; It spreads its exhalation, smothering the other scents under its surprising breath abundance.”

— Emile Zola

“When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating.”

— Emile Zola

“Has science ever retreated? No! It is Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be forced to retreat.”

— Emile Zola

“Art for me ... is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside of all the rules and all the demands of society.”

— Emile Zola

Governments are suspicious of literature because it is a force that eludes them.

— Emile Zola

“The word realist means nothing to me, because I would subordinate reality to temperament. Give me what is true and I applaud; but give me what is individual and alive and I applaud even more.”

— Emile Zola

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

— Emile Zola

“Paris flared
Paris, which the divine sun had sown with light, and where in glory waved the great future harvest of Truth and of Justice.”

— Emile Zola

“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.”

— Emile Zola

Why is it that my heart is so touched whenever I meet a dog lost in our noisy streets? Why do I feel such anguished pity when I see one of these creatures coming and going, sniffing everyone, frightened, despairing of even finding its master?

— Emile Zola

“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.”

— Emile Zola

“The vague torment of ... ambition.”

— Emile Zola

“A new dynasty is never founded without a struggle. Blood makes good manure.”

— Emile Zola

“A god of kindness would be charitable to all. Your god of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy.”

— Emile Zola

“In Paris, everything's for sale: wise virgins, foolish virgins, truth and lies, tears and smiles.”

— Emile Zola

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

— Emile Zola

Respectable people ... What bastards!

— Emile Zola