246 Quotes by Émile Zola

I do not despair in the least of ultimate triumph. I repeat it with intense conviction.

Governments are suspicious of literature because it is a force that eludes them.

Art for me...is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside of all the rules and all the demands of society.

Why is it that my heart is so touched whenever I meet a dog lost in our noisy streets? Why do I feel such anguished pity when I see one of these creatures coming and going, sniffing everyone, frightened, despairing of even finding its master?

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

Don't go looking at me like that because you'll wear your eyes out.

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.

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

How evil life must be if it were indeed necessary that such imploring cries, such cries of physical and moral wretchedness, should ever and ever ascend to heaven!