Top 94 Quotes & Sayings by Emile Zola

I defy you to find any real will, any reasoning force, outside of life. And everything is there; there is, in the world, no other will than this force which impels everything to life, a life even broader and higher.

When people have not the same ideas, it is certainly better not to talk about them.

Up to this day, there has been no proof of the existence of any intelligence other than the human.

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

I am an artist... I am here to live out loud.

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

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

I believe that the future of humanity is in the progress of reason through science. I believe that the pursuit of truth, through science, is the divine ideal which man should propose to himself.

Perfection is such a nuisance that I often regret having cured myself of using tobacco.

Vines will be planted, corn will spring up, a whole growth of new crops; and people will still fall in love in vintages and harvests yet to come. Life is eternal; it is a perpetual renewal of birth and growth.

The fear of life, the fear of burdens and of duties, of annoyances and of catastrophes! The fear of life, which makes us, through dread of its sufferings, refuse its joys. Ah! I tell you, this cowardliness enrages me; I cannot forgive it. We must live - live a complete life - live all our life.

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

There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.

Selling beauty is something I can understand. Even selling false beauty seems perfectly natural; it's a sign of progress.

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

One must be arrogant, indeed, to imagine that one can take everything in one's hand and know everything!

People like comfort; that's natural. But as for making money simply for the sake of making it, and giving yourself far more trouble and anxiety to gain it than you can ever get pleasure from it when it's gained, why, as for me, I'd rather sit still and cross my arms.

I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.

The truth is on the march and nothing will stop it.

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

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.

If you shut up truth, and bury it underground, it will but grow.

Keep well; that is the half of wisdom and of happiness.

If I cannot overwhelm with my quality, I will overwhelm with my quantity.

I believe that all is illusion and vanity outside the treasure of truths slowly accumulated, and which will never again be lost. I believe that the sum of these truths, always increasing, will at last confer on man incalculable power and peace, if not happiness. Yes, I believe in the final triumph of life.

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

A god of kindness would be charitable to all. Your god of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy.

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

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

Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like.

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.

The road to Lourdes is littered with crutches, but not one wooden leg.

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

In love as in speculation there is much filth; in love also, people think only of their own gratification; yet without love there would be no life, and the world would come to an end.

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.

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

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!

Respectable people... What bastards!

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

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

Nothing develops intelligence like travel.

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

Yes! live life with every fibre of one's being, surrender oneself to it, with no thoughts of rebellion, without deluding oneself that one can improve it and render it painless.

Oh, that's typical of you modern young men; you've nibbled at science and it's made you ill, because you've not been able to satisfy that old craving for the absolute that you absorbed in your nurseries. You'd like science to give you all the answers at one go, whereas we're only just beginning to understand it, and it'll probably never be anything but an eternal quest. And so you repudiate science, you fall back on religion, and religion won't have you any more. Then you relapse into pessimism...Yes, it's the disease of our age, of the end of the century: you're all inverted Werthers.

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

The conclusion does not belong to the artist.

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?

Everything is only a dream.

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

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.

My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.

Every wave is a water sprite who swims in the current, each current is a path which snakes towards my palace, and my palace is fluidly built at the bottom of the lake, in the triangle of earth, fire and water.

Lovers are made by a kiss.

It is not necessary that one should humble oneself to deserve assistance, it is sufficient that one should suffer.

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.

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.

The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.