Quotes from Émile Zola

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.

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

Åžehirlerin her taraf?n? tutuÅŸturun, milletleri yok edin, her ÅŸeyi silip süpürün ve ÅŸu çürümüÅŸ dünyada hiçbir eser b?rakmay?n; belki o zaman ortaya daha iyi bir dünya ç?kar.

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.

Hay?r, baz? kusurlar ba???lanamaz... Bir toplumu uçuruma sürükleyen a??r? hoÅŸgörüdür.

Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?

Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they've been taught is wrong!

It was always the same; other people gave up loving before she did. They got spoilt, or else they went away; in any case, they were partly to blame. Why did it happen so? She herself never changed; when she loved anyone, it was for life. She could not understand desertion; it was something so huge, so monstrous that the notion of it made her little heart break.

Violence has never prospered, you can't remake the world in a day. Anyone who promises to change everything for you all at once is either a fool or a rogue!

There's only one thing that warms my heart, and that is the thought that we are going to sweep away these bourgeois.

Inability, human incapacity, is the only boundary to an art.

Sin became a luxury, a flower set in her hair, a diamond fastened on her brow.

We are like books. Most people only see our cover, the minority read only the introduction, many people believe the critics. Few will know our content.

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

All of a sudden, in the good-natured child, the woman stood revealed, a disturbing woman with all the impulsive madness of her sex, opening the gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was still smiling, but with the deadly smile of a man-eater.

Nothing could be more heart rending than this mute and motionless dispair

She might have liked to try to strangle him with those slender fingers of hers, but she wanted to make a job of it and this great patience with which she waited for her claws to grow was in itself a form of enjoyment.

One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.

In the sudden change that had come over her heart she no longer recognized herself

It is a crime to poison the minds of the meek and the humble, to stoke the passions of reactionism and intolerance, by appealing to that odious anti-Semitism that, unchecked, will destroy the freedom-loving France of the Rights of Man. It is a crime to exploit patriotism in the service of hatred, and it is, finally, a crime to ensconce the sword as the modern god, whereas all science is toiling to achieve the coming era of truth and justice.

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.

Le soleil mentait, quand il se couchait si doux et si calme, au milieu de la grande sérénité du soir.

An entire lifetime would not be long enough for you to exhaust the glance of the young harvest-girl.

He knew that, from now on, every day would be alike, that they would all bring the same sufferings. And he saw the weeks, the months, the years that awaited him, gloomy and implacable, coming one after the other, falling on him and suffocating him bit by bit. When the future is without hope, the present takes on a vile, bitter taste.