Émile Zola Quotes

44 Sourced Quotes

I repeat with the most vehement conviction: truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it.

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

Émile Zola
Art is a human product, a human secretion; it is our body that sweats the beauty of our works.

Émile Zola
To convince Cézanne of anything is like teaching the towers of Notre Dame to dance.

Émile Zola
And now we come to the Esterhazy case. Three years have passed, many consciences remain profoundly troubled, become anxious, investigate, and wind up convinced that Dreyfus is innocent.

Émile Zola
If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, I will answer you: I am here to live out loud!

Émile Zola
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.

Émile Zola
How could anyone expect a court martial to undo what another court martial had done?
I am not even talking about the way the judges were hand-picked. Doesn't the overriding idea of discipline, which is the lifeblood of these soldiers, itself undercut their capacity for fairness? Discipline means obedience. When the Minister of War, the commander in chief, proclaims, in public and to the acclamation of the nation's representatives, the absolute authority of a previous verdict, how can you expect a court martial to rule against him?

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

Émile Zola
I would like to point out how this travesty was made possible, how it sprang out of the machinations of Major du Paty de Clam, how Generals Mercier, de Boisdeffre and Gonse became so ensnared in this falsehood that they would later feel compelled to impose it as holy and indisputable truth. Having set it all in motion merely by carelessness and lack of intelligence, they seem at worst to have given in to the religious bias of their milieu and the prejudices of their class. In the end, they allowed stupidity to prevail.

Émile Zola
A work of art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.

Émile Zola
When lovers kiss on the cheeks, it is because they are searching, feeling for one another's lips. Lovers are made by a kiss.

Émile Zola
I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease in my generation.

Émile Zola
Lt. Colonel Picquart had carried out his duty as an honest man. He kept insisting to his superiors in the name of justice. He even begged them, telling them how impolitic it was to temporize in the face of the terrible storm that was brewing and that would break when the truth became known.

Émile Zola
Paris flared — Paris, which the divine sun had sown with light, and where in glory waved the great future harvest of Truth and of Justice.

Émile Zola
It came down, once again, to the General Staff protecting itself, not wanting to admit its crime, an abomination that has been growing by the minute.

Émile Zola
Ah, what a cesspool of folly and foolishness, what preposterous fantasies, what corrupt police tactics, what inquisitorial, tyrannical practices! What petty whims of a few higher-ups trampling the nation under their boots, ramming back down their throats the people's cries for truth and justice, with the travesty of state security as a pretext.

Émile Zola
We have before us the ignoble spectacle of men who are sunken in debts and crimes being hailed as innocent, whereas the honor of a man whose life is spotless is being vilely attacked: A society that sinks to that level has fallen into decay.

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

Émile Zola
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.

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

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

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

Émile Zola
A ruined man fell from her hands like a ripe fruit, to lie rotting on the ground.

Émile Zola
In making these accusations I am aware that I am making myself liable to articles 30 and 31 of the law of 29 July 1881 regarding the press, which make libel a punishable offence. I expose myself to that risk voluntarily.

Émile Zola