Emile Zola Quotes

Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy.

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

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

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

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

Art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.

It is not I who am strong, it is reason, it is truth.

The fate of animals is of far greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous.

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

Je n'ai guère de souci de beauté ni de perfection... Je n'ai souci que de vie, de lutte, de fièvre.

Crever pour crever, je préfère crever de passion que de crever d'ennui !

Il n'y a rien comme l'amour pour donner du courage aux jeunes gens.

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

If something's just, I'll let myself be hacked to bits for it.

Very well, sir. A woman's opinion, however humble she may be, is always worth listening to, if she's got any sense...If you put yourself in my hands, I shall certainly make a decent man of you.

While the storm was erupting, she stayed, staring at it, watching the shafts of lightning, like someone who could see serious things, far away in the future in these sudden flashes of light.

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.

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!

Men were springing up, a black avenging host was slowly germinating in the furrows, thrusting upward for the harvests of future ages. And very soon their germination would crack the earth asunder.

As he talked a good deal, had seen active service, and was naturally regarded as a man of energy and spirit, he was much sought after and listened to by simpletons.

For Zola, as for Huysmans, nature itself is uncanny because it is the domain of the feminine, a domain that is constitutionally defective, lacking, even pathological.

Şehirlerin her tarafını tutuşturun, milletleri yok edin, her şeyi silip süpürün ve şu çürümüş dünyada hiçbir eser bırakmayın; belki o zaman ortaya daha iyi bir dünya çıkar.

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

„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.“ —

Great minds defend values—like justice in the case of Victor Hugo, and equality for Emile Zola.

... 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.

Emily Zola.That's only the second woman I've seen down here. What's up with that?" But before St. Clair can answer, the grating voice says, "It's Emile." We turn around to find a smug guy in a Euro Disney sweatshirt. "Emile Zola is a man." My face burns. I reach for St. Clair's arm to pull us away again,but St. Clair is already in his face. "Emile Zola was a man," he corrects. "And you're an arse. Why don't you mind your own bloody business and leave her alone!

She alone was left standing, amid the accumulated riches of her mansion, while a host of men lay stricken at her feet. Like those monsters of ancient times whose fearful domains were covered with skeletons, she rested her feet on human skulls and was surrounded by catastrophes...The fly that had come from the dungheap of the slums, carrying the ferment of social decay, had poisoned all these men simply by alighting on them. It was fitting and just. She had avenged the beggars and outcasts of her world. And while, as it were, her sex rose in a halo of glory and blazed down on her prostrate victims like a rising sun shining down on a field of carnage, she remained as unconscious of her actions as a splendid animal, ignorant of the havoc she had wreaked, and as good-natured as ever.

J’accuse,” published in 1898, Emile Zola

If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way. —EMILE ZOLA

‎"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.

Angelique, with both hands open, lying limply on her knees, was giving herself. And Felicien remembered the evening on which she had run barefoot through the grass, so adorable that he had pursued her, and whispered in her ear, "I love you". And he understood full well that only now had she replied, with the same cry, "I love you." And he understood full well that only now had she replied, with the same cry, "I love you", the eternal cry that had finally emerged from her wide-open heart. "I love you... Take me, carry me away, I am yours.

As for you, you’re a parson,’ he muttered; ‘you did well; a parson’s a very happy man. The calling absorbs you, eh? And so you’ve taken to the good path. Well! you would never have been satisfied otherwise. Your relatives, starting like you, have done a deal of evil, and still they are unsatisfied. It’s all logically perfect, my lad. A priest completes the family. Besides, it was inevitable. Our blood was bound to run to that. So much the better for you; you have had the most luck.

In the day, he thought of nothing; at night, he slept heavily and dreamlessly. Face pink and fat, stomach full, brain empty, he was happy.

MARY: Catherine! Is it necessary to include such a detail? CATHERINE: Do you expect our readers to believe that we had no bodily needs or functions for entire days at a time? MARY: No, but such things are simply—unstated. They go without saying. CATHERINE: It’s very fashionable now to include realistic details, no matter how unpleasant or improper. Look at the French writers. Look at Émile Zola. MARY: We are not French.

One morning she at last succeeded in helping him to the foot of the steps, trampling down the grass before him with her feet, and clearing a way for him through the briars, whose supple arms barred the last few yards. Then they slowly entered the wood of roses. It was indeed a very wood, with thickets of tall standard roses throwing out leafy clumps as big as trees, and enormous rose bushes impenetrable as copses of young oaks. Here, formerly, there had been a most marvellous collection of plants. But since the flower garden had been left in abandonment, everything had run wild, and a virgin forest had arisen, a forest of roses over-running the paths, crowded with wild offshoots, so mingled, so blended, that roses of every scent and hue seemed to blossom on the same stem. Creeping roses formed mossy carpets on the ground, while climbing roses clung to others like greedy ivy plants, and ascended in spindles of verdure, letting a shower of their loosened petals fall at the lightest breeze. Natural paths coursed through the wood — narrow footways, broad avenues, enchanting covered walks in which one strolled in the shade and scent. These led to glades and clearings, under bowers of small red roses, and between walls hung with tiny yellow ones. Some sunny nooks gleamed like green silken stuff embroidered with bright patterns; other shadier corners offered the seclusion of alcoves and an aroma of love, the balmy warmth, as it were, of a posy languishing on a woman’s bosom. The rose bushes had whispering voices too. And the rose bushes were full of songbirds’ nests. ‘We must take care not to lose ourselves,’ said Albine, as she entered the wood. ‘I did lose myself once, and the sun had set before I was able to free myself from the rose bushes which caught me by the skirt at every step.’ They had barely walked a few minutes, however, before Serge, worn out with fatigue, wished to sit down. He stretched himself upon the ground, and fell into deep slumber. Albine sat musing by his side. They were on the edge of a glade, near a narrow path which stretched away through the wood, streaked with flashes of sunlight, and, through a small round blue gap at its far end, revealed the sky. Other little paths led from the clearing into leafy recesses. The glade was formed of tall rose bushes rising one above the other with such a wealth of branches, such a tangle of thorny shoots, that big patches of foliage were caught aloft, and hung there tent-like, stretching out from bush to bush. Through the tiny apertures in the patches of leaves, which were suggestive of fine lace, the light

inlaid in Florentine mosaic, the very flower-stands placed in the recesses of the windows, oozed and sweated with gold. At the four corners of the room were four great lamps placed on pedestals of red marble, to which they were fastened by chains of bronze gilt, that fell with symmetrical grace. And from the ceiling hung three lustres with crystal pendants, streaming with drops of blue and pink light, whose hot glare drew a responding gleam from all the gold in the room.

Oppenheimer’s friend the syndicated columnist Joe Alsop was outraged by the decision. “By a single foolish and ignoble act,” he wrote Gordon Gray, “you have cancelled the entire debt that this country owes you.” Joe and his brother Stewart soon published a 15,000-word essay in Harper’s lambasting Lewis Strauss for a “shocking miscarriage of justice.” Borrowing from Emile Zola’s essay on the Dreyfus affair, “J’Accuse,” the Alsops titled their essay “We Accuse!” In florid language they argued that the AEC had disgraced, not Robert Oppenheimer, but the “high name of American freedom.” There were obvious similarities: Both Oppenheimer and Capt. Alfred Dreyfus came from wealthy Jewish backgrounds and both men were forced to stand trial, accused of disloyalty. The Alsops predicted that the long-term ramifications of the Oppenheimer case would echo those of the Dreyfus case: “As the ugliest forces in France engineered the Dreyfus case in swollen pride and overweening confidence, and then broke their teeth and their power on their own sordid handiwork, so the similar forces in America, which have created the climate in which Oppenheimer was judged, may also break their teeth and power in the Oppenheimer case.

In 1892 the Hungarian doctor and journalist Max Nordau published his Entartung (Degeneration), which he dedicated to Cesare Lombroso. Despite its size (almost six hundred pages), the book became an international bestseller and soon appeared in a dozen languages. Nordau had expanded the Lombrosian analysis to show that “degenerates are not always criminals, prostitutes … lunatics; they are often authors and artists.” Charles Baudelaire and the French “decadent” poets, Oscar Wilde (Bram Stoker’s original model for Count Dracula), Manet and the Impressionists, Henrik Ibsen, Leo Tolstoy, Emile Zola, as well as Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche—all the leading lights of fin de siècle culture, in fact—came under Doctor Nordau’s critical microscope. He concluded that they were all victims of diseased “subjective states of mind.” The modern degenerate artist, like his criminal counterpart, lacks a moral sense: “For them there exists no law, no decency, no modesty.” Emotionalism and hysteria, as well as that old disease of Romanticism, ennui , pervade their works and outlook, Nordau proclaimed, because of their enfeebled nervous state. “The degenerate and insane,” he wrote, “are the predestined disciples of Schopenhauer.

Manet, however, was enthralled; he proceeded to give the title Nana to his painting of the courtesan Henriette Hauser, naming it after the daughter of the alcoholic laundress Gervaise Lantier in L’assommoir. Zola had not yet even begun to write his novel Nana, but the references in Manet’s painting were clear. When the Salon (presumably scandalized) rejected it, he brashly showed it in the window of a shop on the Boulevard des Capucines, virtually on the doorstep of the Opéra Garnier, where it created a succès de scandale. Zola, of course, appreciated the value of scandal in promoting his novels and was adept at creating it.

The large drawing-room was an immense, long room, with a sort of gallery that ran from one pavilion to the other, taking up the whole of the façade on the garden side. A large French window opened on to the steps. This gallery glittered with gold. The ceiling, gently arched, had fanciful scrolls winding round great gilt medallions, that shone like bucklers. Bosses and dazzling garlands encircled the arch; fillets of gold, resembling threads of molten metal, ran round the walls, framing the panels, which were hung with red silk; festoons of roses, topped with tufts of full-blown blossoms, hung down along the sides of the mirrors. An Aubusson carpet spread its purple flowers over the polished flooring. The furniture of red silk damask, the door-hangings and window-curtains of the same material, the huge ormolu clock on the mantel-piece, the porcelain vases standing on the consoles, the legs of the two long tables

In the meantime, he anxiously awaited visitors, and on occasion even attempted some visits of his own—including one to his nearby Bellevue neighbor, the charming and notorious courtesan Valtesse de la Bigne. Red-haired and beautiful, Valtesse de la Bigne had brought several rich and titled men to financial ruin. She had also captivated some of the most sophisticated men in town, including Manet, who referred to her as “la belle Valtesse” and had painted her the year before. Born Louise Emilie Delabigne, Valtesse de la Bigne was sufficiently intelligent and charming to draw an entourage of admiring writers and artists such as Manet. Zola also paid court to Valtesse—although in his case from a desire to get the characters and setting right for his upcoming novel Nana. Flattered by his journalistic interest, Valtesse even agreed to show him her bedroom—until then off-limits to all but her most highly paying patrons. Zola (who seems to have limited his visit to note taking) used her over-the-top boudoir as the model for Nana’s bedroom. Even if the fictional Nana was nowhere near the sophisticated creature that Valtesse had become, the bed said it all. It was “a bed such as had never existed before,” Zola wrote, “a throne, an altar, to which Paris would come in order to worship her sovereign nudity.

L'hérédité a ses lois, comme la pesanteur.

He dreamed of a life of cheap and sensual pleasure, a fine life full of women, of reclining on couches, eating, getting drunk.

It was the usual story of penniless young men, who think themselves obliged by their birth to choose a liberal profession and bury themselves in a sort of vain mediocrity, happy even when they escape starvation, notwithstanding their numerous degrees.

For a moment he was filled with envy, revolt, and bitter jealousy. He asked himself why he was poor whilst others were rich.

The young household lived liked birds in a warm, secluded nest of moss.

Była z niej w owych czasach dziewuszka bardzo milutka, jasnowłosa i świeża. Koleżanki z pralni na ulicy Nowej wybrały ją na królową, mimo że była kulawa. No, i paradowało się po bulwarach, na umajonych pięknie wozach, wśród postronnych ludzi, którzy ją po prostu zjadali wzrokiem. Panowie przykładali do oczu lornetki, jakby była prawdziwą królową. Potem wieczorem odchodziła pyszna zabawa i aż do białego rana wszyscy wywijali nogami. Królowa, tak! Królowa w koronie i z szarfą, przez dwadzieścia cztery godziny, przez dwa okrążenia małej wskazówki na tarczy zegara! I ociężała, w głodowych męczarniach, wpatrywała się w ziemię, jakby szukała tego rynsztoka, w którym zgubiła swój majestat królowej strąconej z tronu.

Właśnie w chwili kiedy wszyscy goście skakali i wrzeszczeli dla zabawy, w drzwiach ukazał się Goujet. Nie odważając się wejść, stał na progu onieśmielony, z wielkim krzewem białej róży w rękach – wspaniałym krzakiem, którego łodyga sięgała mu aż do twarzy, powplątywana kwiatami w jego płową brodę. Gervaise podbiegła ku niemu z twarzą rozpłomienioną żarem bijącym znad blachy pieców. Jakoś nie umiał się pozbyć ciężkiej swej donicy, a gdy solenizantka wzięła mu ją z rąk, coś tam tylko wykrztusił, nie odważając się jej uściskać. Dopiero ona sama musiała się wspiąć na palce i nadstawić mu policzek do ucałowania; on jednak i tak był jeszcze do tego stopnia zmieszany, że pocałował ją w oko, i to tak mocno, że o mało go jej nie wybił. Oboje aż zadrżeli przy tym ze wzruszenia.

Il devint ainsi un de ces ouvriers savants qui savent à peine signer leur nom et qui parlent de l'algèbre comme d'une personne de leur connaissance. Rien ne détraque autant un esprit qu'une pareille instruction, faite à bâtons rompus, ne reposant sur aucune base solide. Le plus souvent, ces miettes de science donnent une idée absolument fausse des hautes vérités, et rendent les pauvres d'esprit insupportables de carrure bête. Chez Silvère, les bribes de savoir volé ne firent qu'accroître les exaltations généreuses. Il eut conscience des horizons qui lui restaient fermés. Il se fit une idée sainte de ces choses qu'il n'arrivait pas à toucher de la main, et il vécut dans une profonde et innocente religion des grandes pensées et des grands mots vers lesquels il se haussait, sans toujours les comprendre. Ce fut un naïf, un naïf sublime, resté sur le seuil du temple, à genoux devant des cierges qu'il prenait de loin pour des étoiles.

I saw your brother Octave at Marseilles last month. He is off to Paris, where he will get a fine berth in a high-class business. The young beggar, a nice life he leads.’ ‘What life?’ innocently inquired the priest. To avoid replying the doctor chirruped to his horse, and then went on: ‘Briefly, everybody is well—your aunt Felicite, your uncle Rougon, and the others. Still, that does not hinder our needing your prayers. You are the saint of the family, my lad; I rely upon you to save the whole lot.

The house beneath slumbered in unbroken stillness. The silence filled his ears with a hum, which grew into a sound of whispering voices. Slowly and irresistibly these voices mastered him and increased the feeling of anxiety which had almost choked him several times that day. What could be the cause of such mental anguish? What could be the strange trouble which had slowly grown within him and had now become so unbearable? He had not fallen into sin.

What is a source of sorrow to some is a source of joy to others.

Craning her neck to look at the Poissonniere gate, she remained for a time watching the constant stream of men, horses, and carts which flooded down from the heights of Montmartre and La Chapelle, pouring between the two squat octroi lodges. It was like a herd of plodding cattle, an endless throng widened by sudden stoppages into eddies that spilled off the sidewalks into the street, a steady procession of laborers on their way back to work with tools slung over their back and a loaf of bread under their arm. This human inundation kept pouring down into Paris to be constantly swallowed up.

Etienne now commanded a view of the whole district. It was still very dark, but the old man had peopled the darkness with untold sufferings, which the young one could sense all round him in the limitless space. Could he not hear a cry of famine borne over this bleak country by the March wind? The gale had lashed itself into a fury and seemed to be blowing death to all labour and a great hunger that would finish off men by the hundred. And with his roving eye he tried to peer through the gloom, with a tormenting desire to see and yet a fear of seeing. Everything slid away in the dark unknown, and all he could see was distant furnaces and coke-ovens which, set in batteries of a hundred chimneys arranged obliquely, made sloping lines of crimson flames; whilst further to the left the two blast-furnaces were burning blue in the sky like monstrous torches. It was as depressing to watch as a building on fire: as far as the threatening horizon the only stars which rose were the nocturnal fires of the land of coal and iron.

I can still see those penetrating landscapes of my youth. I well know that I belong to them, that what little of love and truth is in me comes to me from their tranquil delights.

One day when she ventured upon a bit of criticism, precisely about an azure-tinted poplar, he made her go to nature and note for herself the delicate bluishness of the foliage. It was true enough, the tree was blue; but in her inmost heart she did not surrender, and condemned reality

As they left the forest, twilight had fallen, and the moon was rising, round and yellow, between the black foliage. It was a delightful walk home through the park, with that discreet luminary peering at them through the gaps in the big trees. Albine said that the moon was surely following them. The night was balmy, warm too with stars. Far away a long murmur rose from the forest trees, and Serge listened, thinking: ‘They are talking of us.’ When they reached the parterre, they passed through an atmosphere of sweetest perfumes; the perfume of flowers at night, which is richer, more caressing than by day, and seems like the very breath of slumber. ‘Good night, Serge.’ ‘Good night, Albine.’ They clasped each other by the hand on the landing of the first floor, without entering the room where they usually wished each other good night. They did not kiss. But Serge, when he was alone, remained seated on the edge of his bed, listening to Albine’s every movement in the room above. He was weary with happiness, a happiness that benumbed his limbs.

Hayır, bazı kusurlar bağışlanamaz... Bir toplumu uçuruma sürükleyen aşırı hoşgörüdür.

The mystery of love, the immolation of the Holy Victim, was about to begin. The server took the Missal and bore it to the left, or Gospel-side, of the altar, taking care not to touch the pages of the book. Each time he passed before the tabernacle he made a genuflexion slantwise, which threw him all askew. Returning to the right-hand side once more, he stood upright with crossed arms during the reading of the Gospel. The priest, after making the sign of the cross upon the Missal, next crossed himself: first upon his forehead—to declare that he would never blush for the divine word; then on his mouth—to show his unchanging readiness to confess his faith; and finally on his heart—to mark that it belonged to God alone. ‘Dominus vobiscum,’ said he, turning round and facing the cold white church.

Orate, fratres,’ resumed the priest aloud as he faced the empty benches, extending and reclasping his hands in a gesture of appeal to all men of good-will. And turning again towards the altar, he continued his prayer in a lower tone, while Vincent began to mutter a long Latin sentence in which he eventually got lost. Now it was that the yellow sunbeams began to dart through the windows; called, as it were, by the priest, the sun itself had come to mass, throwing golden sheets of light upon the left-hand wall, the confessional, the Virgin’s altar, and the big clock.

- Je veux qu'on s'écrabouille pour Emile Zola. Tu connais Zola, quand même ? - Le Gorgon Zola, oui, je connais.

Boğaziçinde yüzme yarışını kazanan; Çatalca’da güreşen; Veliefendi çayırında adım atlayan; “Mütenebbi”yi, “İbnülfarız”ı, Kur’an’ı ezber bilen; Hersek müftüsü Fehmi Hoca ile “İlmi Ensab” konuşan; Dağıstanlı Halis Hoca ile “Kitabül Kamil”i hasbihal eden; Musa Kâzım Hoca ile Bedrettin’in “Varidat”ını okuyan; sonra “Emile Zola”nın, romanlarında, insan yığınlarını idaredeki kudretini seven ve münekkitlerin de bunu beğendiklerini görünce takdirindeki isabete sevinen; sonra Halkalı mektebinin bahçesinde, “istiskai batn”a uğrayan ineklerin karnından “trocart”la su alan; sonra “Aruz”un orkestrasyonunu yapan Akif, bir taraftan da Nısfiye üflüyordu.

Notwithstanding the ecclesiastical resistance to Wheeler’s and its notoriously ‘French’ content— especially books authored by the controversial writer, Emile Zola—the stalls had acquired exclusive rights to sell books on all Indian stations in the north, west and east, and also began issuing advertisements in favour of the Indian Railways. This is how the Wheeler stalls came to be ‘in service of the nation.

A last red ray lighting up that stern soldier-like head, on which the tonsure lay like a cicatrised wound from the blow of a club; then the ray faded away and the priest, now wrapped in shadow, seemed nothing more than a black silhouette against the ashy grey of the gloaming.

You see, everything is fine so long as you make money by it.” These last words seemed to freeze the serious men. The conversation dropped flat, and each appeared to avoid his neighbour’s eyes.

The strains of the work are intense, the lifespan of the machines short. ‘When one of them reaches the end of its useful days,’ says Neil, ‘it’s not cost-effective to bring it back up. It’d take the place of ore in the upshaft, and that’s too expensive. So instead the machine gets driven into a worked-out tunnel of rock salt, and abandoned there. The halite will flow around it as the tunnel naturally closes up.’ It is an astonishing image: the translucent halite melting around this cybernetic dragon – the fossilization of this machine-relic in its burial shroud of salt. I remember the pit ponies about which Emile Zola had written, brought down as foals into France’s great nineteenth-century coal mines. The foals would not see daylight again. They grew in the mines, were fed there, were worked to death there, and their stunted bodies were left in side tunnels, awaiting the burial of collapse.