246 Quotes by Émile Zola

Since the same human mire remains beneath, does not all civilisation reduce itself to the superiority of smelling nice and living well?

At the street corner, a one-storey house built of freestone, but repulsively decrepit and filthy, seemed to command the entrance, like a gaol. And here, indeed, lived La Méchain, like a vigilant proprietess, ever on the watch, exploiting in person her little population of starving tenants.

She was a virgin and a warrior, disdainful of the male, which was what eventually convinced people that she really must be off her head.

A horribly bitter taste came into his mouth: the futility of everything, the eternal pain of existence.

In my view you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it.

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

Over all crowds there seems to float a vague distress, an atmosphere of pervasive melancholy, as if any large gathering of people creates an aura of terror and pity.

The sea with its perpetual oscillation, that obstinate swell sweeping up to the cliffs twice a day, exasperated him: it was senseless force, indifferent to his grief, wearing down the same rocks for centuries while never mourning the death of a single human being. it was too vast, too cold; and he would hurry home and shut himself indoors, to feel less insignificant, less crushed between the dual infinities of sea and sky.

No, the only good was to be found in non-existence or, if one had to exist, in being a tree, a stone, or lower still, a grain of sand, for that cannot bleed under the heel of every passer-by.