L'Argent Quotes

“Since the same human mire remains beneath, does not all civilisation reduce itself to the superiority of smelling nice and living well?”
― Émile Zola, L'Argent

“Why then should money be blamed for all the dirt and crimes it causes? For is love less filthy - love which creates life?”
― Émile Zola, L'Argent

“Speculation, speculation!' she [Caroline Hamelin] mechanically repeated, struggling with her doubts. 'Ah! the idea of it fills my heart with disturbing anguish.”
― Émile Zola, L'Argent

“At the street corner, a one-storey house built of freestone, but repulsively decrepit and filthy, seemed to command the entrance, like a gaol. And here, indeed, lived La Méchain, like a vigilant proprietess, ever on the watch, exploiting in person her little population of starving tenants.”
― Émile Zola, L'Argent

“In love as 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.”
― Émile Zola, L'Argent

“he’d sell us both, you, me, anyone at all, if we were part of some deal. And he would do all that quite unthinkingly, as a man of quality, for he really is the poet of the million, money simply makes him mad, makes him a scoundrel—oh!”
― Émile Zola, Money