Émile Zola > Quotes

“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.”
― Émile Zola

“Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.”
― Émile Zola

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.”
― Émile Zola

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

“Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like.”
― Émile Zola, Germinal (Les Rougon-Macquart, #13)

“Don't go looking at me like that because you'll wear your eyes out.”
― Émile Zola, La Bête Humaine

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

“Art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.”
― Émile Zola

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

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

“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.”
― Émile Zola, J'accuse !

“I am an artist. I am here to live out loud.”
― Émile Zola

“Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy.”
― Émile Zola

“Je n'ai guère de souci de beauté ni de perfection... Je n'ai souci que de vie, de lutte, de fièvre.”
― Émile Zola

“And then there are always clever people about to promise you that everything will be all right if only you put yourself out a bit... And you get carried away, you suffer so much from the things that exist that you ask for what can't ever exist. Now look at me, I was well away dreaming like a fool and seeing visions of a nice friendly life on good terms with everybody, and off I went, up into the clouds. And when you fall back into the mud it hurts a lot. No! None of it was true, none of those things we thought we could see existed at all. All that was really there was still more misery-- oh yes! as much of that as you like-- and bullets into the bargain!”
― Émile Zola

“The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.”
― Émile Zola, The Masterpiece

“The day is not far off when one ordinary carrot may be pregnant with revolution.”
― Émile 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”
― Émile Zola, Work 11

“Il n'y a rien comme l'amour pour donner du courage aux jeunes gens.”
― Émile Zola

“Le soleil mentait, quand il se couchait si doux et si calme, au milieu de la grande sérénité du soir.”
― Émile Zola, La mort d'Olivier Bécaille et autres nouvelles

“An entire lifetime would not be long enough for you to exhaust the glance of the young harvest-girl.”
― Émile Zola, Truth

“... Have you ever reflected that posterity may not be the faultless dispenser of justice that we dream of? One consoles oneself for being insulted and denied, by reyling on the equity of the centuries to come; just as the faithful endure all the abominations of this earth in the firm belief of another life, in which each will be rewarded according to his deserts. But suppose Paradise exists no more for the artist than it does for the Catholic, suppose that future generations prolong the misunderstanding and prefer amiable little trifles to vigorous works! Ah! What a sell it would be, eh? To have led a convict's life - to have screwed oneself down to one's work - all for a mere delusion!...

"Bah! What does it matter? Well, there's nothing hereafter. We are even madder than the fools who kill themselves for a woman. When the earth splits to pieces in space like a dry walnut, our works won't add one atom to its dust.”
― Émile Zola

“It is not I who am strong, it is reason, it is truth.”
― Émile 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.”
― Émile Zola, Thérèse Raquin

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

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

“The fate of animals is of far greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous.”
― Émile Zola

“And that wreched creature without hands or feet, who had to be put to bed and fed like a child, that pitiable remnant of a man, whose almost vanished life was nothing more than one scream of pain, cried out in furious indignation: 'What a fool one must be to go and kill oneself!' " - 'Joy of Life”
― Émile Zola

“If something's just, I'll let myself be hacked to bits for it.”
― Émile Zola

“It [the charcuterie] was almost on the corner of the Rue Pirouette and was a joy to behold. It was bright and inviting, with touches of brilliant colour standing out amidst white marble. The signboard, on which the name QUENU-GRADELLE glittered in fat gilt letter encircled by leaves and branches painted on a soft-hued background, was protected by a sheet of glass. On the two side panels of the shop front, similarly painted and under glass, were chubby little Cupids playing in the midst of boars' heads, pork chops, and strings of sausages; and these still lifes, adorned with scrolls and rosettes, had been designed in so pretty and tender a style that the raw meat lying there assumed the reddish tint of raspberry jam. Within this delightful frame, the window display was arranged. It was set out on a bed of fine shavings of blue paper; a few cleverly positioned fern leaves transformed some of the plates into bouquets of flowers fringed with foliage. There were vast quantities of rich, succulent things, things that melted in the mouth. Down below, quite close to the window, jars of rillettes were interspersed with pots of mustard. Above these were some boned hams, nicely rounded, golden with breadcrumbs, and adorned at the knuckles with green rosettes. Then came the larger dishes--stuffed Strasbourg tongues, with their red, varnished look, the colour of blood next to the pallor of the sausages and pigs' trotters; strings of black pudding coiled like harmless snakes; andouilles piled up in twos and bursting with health; saucissons in little silver copes that made them look like choristers; pies, hot from the oven, with little banner-like tickets stuck in them; big hams, and great cuts of veal and pork, whose jelly was as limpid as crystallized sugar. Towards the back were large tureens in which the meats and minces lay asleep in lakes of solidified fat. Strewn between the various plates and sishes, on the bed of blue shavings, were bottles of relish, sauce, and preserved truffles, pots of foie gras, and tins of sardines and tuna fish. A box of creamy cheeses and one full of snails stuffed with butter and parsley had been dropped in each corner. Finally, at the very top of the display, falling from a bar with sharp prongs, strings of sausages and saveloys hung down symmetrically like the cords and tassels of some opulent tapestry, while behind, threads of caul were stretched out like white lacework. There, on the highest tier of this temple of gluttony, amid the caul and between two bunches of purple gladioli, the alter display was crowned by a small, square fish tank with a little ornamental rockery, in which two goldfish swam in endless circles.”
― Émile Zola

“Death had to take her little by little, bit by bit, dragging her along to the bitter end of the miserable existence she'd made for herself. They never even knew what she did die of. Some spoke of a chill. But the truth was that she died from poverty, from the filth and the weariness of her wretched life.”
― Émile Zola, L'assommoir

“Live out Loud”
― Émile Zola

“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.”
― Émile Zola

“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.”
― Émile Zola, Thérèse Raquin

“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.”
― Émile Zola, Pot-Bouille

“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!”
― Émile Zola, Lourdes

“Miserable humanity was clamouring from the depths of its abyss of suffering, and the clamour swept along, sending a shudder down every spine, for one and all were plunged in agony, refusing to die, longing to compel God to grant them eternal life. Ah ! life, life! That was what all those unfortunates, who had come from so far, amid so many obstacles, wanted - that was the one boon they asked for, in their wild desire to live it over again, to live it always! O Lord, whatever our misery, whatever the torment of our life may be, cure us, grant that we may begin to live again and suffer once more what we have suffered already. However unhappy we may be, to be is what we wish. It is not heaven that we ask Thee for, it is earth; and grant that we may leave it at the latest possible moment , never leave it indeed, if such be Thy good pleasure. And even when we no longer implore a physical cure, but a moral favour, it is still happiness that we ask for; happiness , the thirst for which alone consumes us. Oh Lord, grant that we may be happy and healthy; let us live, ay, let us live forever!”
― Émile Zola, Lourdes

“What everyone agreed was not very nice, was the way Clémence had carried on. Obviously, she wasn't the kind of girl you'd ask again: she'd ended up showing off everything she'd got, and she'd puked all down one of the muslin curtains and completely ruined it. At least the men did go into the street to do it; Lorilleux and Poisson, when they felt queer, managed to dash as far as the pork-butcher's shop. Breeding always tells.”
― Émile Zola

“Inability, human incapacity, is the only boundary to an art.”
― Émile Zola, Le Naturalisme Au Theatre

“Askerlerin kanında bulunan üstün disiplin düşüncesi, doğruluk yetkesini saptırmaya yetmez mi? Disiplin demek boyun eğme demektir.

Ordunun onurundan söz ediliyor bize, onu sevmemiz, ona saygı göstermemiz isteniyor. Evet hiç kuşkusuz, ilk tehditte ayağa kalkacak, Fransız toprağını savunacak olan ordu tüm halktır, ona ancak sevgi ve saygı duyarız. Ama söz konusu o değil, biz de adalet gereksinimimiz içinde onun saygın kalmasını istiyoruz. Belki de yarın bizim elimize verecekleri kılıç sözkonusu, o efendi söz konusu. Kılıcın kabzasını, o tanrıyı dindarca öpmeye gelince, hayır!”
― Émile Zola, The Dreyfus Affair: "J`Accuse" and Other Writings

“A god of kindness would be charitable to all. Your god of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy...It is not necessary that one should humble oneself to deserve assistance, it is sufficient that one should suffer.”
― Émile Zola

“Every wave is a watersprite who swims in the current, each current is a path which snakes towards my palace, and my palace is fluidly built at the bottom of the lake, in the triangle of earth, fire and water.”
― Émile Zola

“Respectable people... What bastards!”
― Émile Zola, The Belly of Paris

“A silence fell at the mention of Gavard. They all looked at each other cautiously. As they were all rather short of breath by this time, it was the camembert they could smell. This cheese, with its gamy odour, had overpowered the milder smells of the marolles and the limbourg; its power was remarkable. Every now and then, however, a slight whiff, a flute-like note, came from the parmesan, while the bries came into play with their soft, musty smell, the gentle sound, so to speak, of a damp tambourine. The livarot launched into an overwhelming reprise, and the géromé kept up the symphony with a sustained high note.”
― Émile Zola, The Belly of Paris

“‎"Well then! it was the end; his ruin was complete. Even if he mended the cables and lit the fires, where would he find men? Another fortnight's strike and he would be bankrupt. And in this certainty of disaster he no longer felt any hatred of the Montsou bandits; he felt that all had a hand in it, that it was a general agelong fault. They were brutes, no doubt, but brutes who could not read, and who were dying of hunger.”
― Émile Zola

“„Ако накарате истината да замълчи, и я погребете дълбоко под земята, тя ще поникне, набрала такава експлозивна сила, че ще помете всичко по пътя си.“ —”
― Émile Zola

“Crever pour crever, je préfère crever de passion que de crever d'ennui !”
― Émile Zola, The Ladies' Paradise