Quotes from Émile Zola

When you have a sorrow that is too great it leaves no room for any other.

When lovers kiss on the cheeks, it is because they are searching, feeling for one another's lips. Lovers are made by a kiss.

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.

When there is no hope in the future, the present appears atrociously bitter.

These young people naturally grow up with ideas different from ours, for they are born for times when we shall no longer be here

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.

I defy you to find any real will, any reasoning force, outside of life. And everything is there; there is, in the world, no other will than this force which impels everything to life, a life even broader and higher.

I am spending delightful afternoons in my garden, watching everything living around me. As I grow older, I feel everything departing, and I love everything with more passion.

One must be arrogant, indeed, to imagine that one can take everything in one's hand and know everything!

Nothing develops intelligence like travel.

Did science promise happiness? I do not believe it. It promised truth, and the question is to know if we will ever make happiness with truth.

I believe that the future of humanity is in the progress of reason through science. I believe that the pursuit of truth, through science, is the divine ideal which man should propose to himself.

The truth is on the march and nothing will stop it.

People like comfort; that's natural. But as for making money simply for the sake of making it, and giving yourself far more trouble and anxiety to gain it than you can ever get pleasure from it when it's gained, why, as for me, I'd rather sit still and cross my arms.

I believe that all is illusion and vanity outside the treasure of truths slowly accumulated, and which will never again be lost. I believe that the sum of these truths, always increasing, will at last confer on man incalculable power and peace, if not happiness. Yes, I believe in the final triumph of life.

Man's highest duty is to protect animals from cruelty.

The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.

If you shut up truth, and bury it underground, it will but grow.

Keep well that is the half of wisdom and of happiness.

A ruined man fell from her hands like a ripe fruit, to lie rotting on the ground.

It all seemed a hollow sham now - that strict code, that conscientious virtue that condemned her to the sterile joys of pious women! No, no, she'd had enough of that; she wanted to live!

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

Perfection is such a nuisance that I often regret having cured myself of using tobacco.

I am an artist... I am here to live out loud.