Quotes from Émile Zola

If I cannot overwhelm with my quality, I will overwhelm with my quantity.

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

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.

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.

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

Art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.

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.

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.

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.

Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Respectable people... What bastards!

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