French writer (1840-1902)
I'd rather die of passion than of boredom!
EMILE ZOLA
The Ladies' Paradise
He was possessed now with that obsession for the cross in which so many lips have worn themselves away on crucifixes.
EMILE ZOLA
La Faute de l'abbe Mouret
I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease in my generation.
EMILE ZOLA
"My Hates"
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?
EMILE ZOLA
La Bete Humaine
We are told of the honor of the army; we are supposed to love and respect it. Ah, yes, of course, an army that would rise to the first threat, that would defend French soil, that army is the nation itself, and for that army we have nothing but devotion and respect. But this is not about that army, whose dignity we are seeking, in our cry for justice. What is at stake is the sword, the master that will one day, perhaps, be forced upon us. Bow and scrape before that sword, that god? No!
EMILE ZOLA
an open letter to French President Felix Faure on the scandal known as the Dreyfuss Affair, "J'accuse!", L'Aurore, Jan. 13, 1898
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
L'Argent
When you have a sorrow that is too great it leaves no room for any other.
EMILE ZOLA
La Bete Humaine
These people came into the world and left it bound to their soil, proliferating on their own dung-hills with slow deliberation like the uncomplicated soul of trees which scatter their seed about their feet, with little conception of any larger world beyond the dun rocks among which they vegetated.
EMILE ZOLA
La Faute de l'abbe Mouret
Don't go looking at me like that because you'll wear your eyes out.
EMILE ZOLA
La Bete humaine
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
Paris
Since the same human mire remains beneath, does not all civilization reduce itself to the superiority of smelling nice and living well?
EMILE ZOLA
L'Argent
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
Therese Raquin
The whole of Paris was lit up. The tiny dancing flames had bespangled the sea of darkness from end to end of the horizon, and now, like millions of stars, they burned with a steady light in the serene summer night. There was no breath of wind to make them flicker as they hung there in space. They made the unseen city seem as vast as a firmament, reaching out into infinity.
EMILE ZOLA
Une page d'amour