The word realist means nothing to me, because I would subordinate reality to temperament. Give me what is true and I applaud; but give me what is individual and alive and I applaud even more.
EMILE ZOLAOver 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.
More Emile Zola Quotes
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Since the same human mire remains beneath, does not all civilization reduce itself to the superiority of smelling nice and living well?
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If I cannot overwhelm with my quality, I will overwhelm with my quantity.
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I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don’t care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.
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She might have liked to try to strangle him with those slender fingers of hers, but she wanted to make a job of it and this great patience with which she waited for her claws to grow was in itself a form of enjoyment.
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The vague torment of ambition.
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When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating.
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My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.
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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.
EMILE ZOLA -
Blow the candle out, I don’t need to see what my thoughts look like.
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Governments are suspicious of literature because it is a force that eludes them.
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Art for me…is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside of all the rules and all the demands of society.
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It is not I who am strong, it is reason, it is truth.
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If something’s just, I’ll let myself be hacked to bits for it.
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When lovers kiss on the cheeks, it is because they are searching, feeling for one another’s lips. Lovers are made by a kiss.
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The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one’s toes on the gravestones.
EMILE ZOLA