Emile Zola Quotes

If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.

If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.

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

Nothing develops intelligence like travel.

The only basis for living is believing in life, loving it, and applying the whole force of one's intellect to know it better.

Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.

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.

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

Truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it.

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

If people can just love each other a little bit, they can be so happy.

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.

It is not I who am strong, it is reason, it is truth.

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

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.

Everything is only a dream.

Respectable people... What bastards!

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.

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

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!

In Paris, everything's for sale: wise virgins, foolish virgins, truth and lies, tears and smiles.

Classical education has deformed everything, and has imposed upon us as geniuses men of correct, facile talent, who follow the beaten track.

The conclusion does not belong to the artist.

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