Quotes from Émile Zola

Lorsque l'avenir est sans espoir, le présent prend une amertume ignoble

The Empire was on the point of turning Paris into the bawdy house of Europe. The gang of fortune-seekers who had succeeded in stealing a throne required a reign of adventures, shady transactions, sold consciences, bought women, and rampant drunkenness.

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

It was a peaceful, sunny death, a sleep without end in the calm of the countryside.

Things were definitely going badly. The night looked like ending in disaster. In one corner of the room Maria Blond had started squabbling with Léa de Horn, whom she accused of sleeping with men who weren't really rich.

Raising her arms, she defied Heaven. 'So,' she cried, 'you prefer your God to me? You think he is stronger than I am. You think he will love you better than I would? Ah, what a child you are! Do stop talking such twaddle. What we are going to do is go back to the garden together, and love each other, be happy and free, for that is life.

Monsieur Josserand died very quietly - a victim of his own honesty. He had lived a useless life, and he went off, worthy to the last, weary of all the petty things in life, done to death by the heartless conduct of the only human beings that he had ever loved.

And, in the warm silence, in the peaceful solitude of the study, Clotilde smiled down at the baby who was still sucking - his little arm in the air, pointing upwards, a symbol of hope and life.

Hortense and Berthe nodded, as though profoundly impressed by the wisdom of their mother's pronouncements. She had long since convinced them of the absolute inferiority of men, whose sole function was to marry and to pay.

All round there was a rising tide of beer, widow Désir's barrels had all been broached, beer had rounded all paunches and was overflowing in all directions, from noses, eyes - and elsewhere. People were so blown out and higgledy-piggledy, that everybody's elbows or knees were sticking into his neighbour and everybody thought it great fun to feel his neighbour's elbows. All mouths were grinning from ear to ear in continuous laughter.

No, the only good in life lay in not being - or, if one had to be, then in being a tree, a stone, or even less than that, the grain of sand that cannot bleed beneath the grinding heel of a passer-by.

Al principio, pretendía aprovechar las ocasiones, a fé de buena ama de casa: luego, se dejaba llevar por la coquetería: al final, se la comían viva.

The stench of the manure that Jean was turning had cheered him up a little. He adored its promise of fertility and was sniffing it with the relish of a man smelling a randy woman.

Therein lies the new hope—Justice, after eighteen hundred years of impotent Charity. Ah! in a thousand years from now, when Catholicism will be naught but a very ancient superstition of the past, how amazed men will be to think that their ancestors were able to endure that religion of torture and nihility!

With his mouth open, he gave off that alcoholic smell that you get from an old brandy cask when you take out the bung.

O ?imdiye kadar bedeniyle sevmi?ti. ?imdi kafas?yla sevmeye ba?lad?.

La nature et les circonstances semblaient avoir fait cette femme pour cet homme, et les avoir poussés l'un vers l'autre.

Si vous me demandez ce que je viens faire en ce monde, moi artiste, je vous répondrai: je viens vivre tout haut.

The more grievous the sin, the greater the repentance, God was bidding His time.

so full of life and activity, was the sky-line of that accursed city, lurid and spattered with blood (93)

She had not taken her hat off, and she wore a dark dress of an indecisive color midway between puce and goose dripping.

À eux deux, la femme, nerveuse et hypocrite, l'homme, sanguin et vivant en brute, ils faisaient un couple puissamment lié. Ils se complétaient, se protégeaient mutuellement. Le soir, à table, dans les clartés pâles de la lampe, on sentait la force de leur union, à voir le visage épais et souriant de Laurent, en face du masque muet et impénétrable de Thérèse.

Ah! si ton mari mourait... Si mon mari mourait..., répéta lentement Thérèse. Nous nous marierions ensemble, nous ne craindrions plus rien, nous jouirions largement de nos amours... Quelle bonne et douce vie!

En sonra, birinci savaÅŸ konseyini, bir san??a gizli kalan bir belgeye dayanarak hüküm giydirdiÄŸi için hukuku çiÄŸnemekle suçluyorum. Ä°kinci savaÅŸ konseyini de üstten gelen emre uyarak, bir suçluyu, suçunu bile bile temize ç?kar?p a??r adli suç iÅŸlemekle, böylece birinci konseyin yasaya ayk?r? davran???n? örtbas etmekle suçluyorum.