Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (April 2, 1840 – September 29, 1902) was a French writer, the most well- known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J'accuse. Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902 (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A god of kindness would be charitable to all. Your god of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy...It is not necessary that one should humble oneself to deserve assistance, it is sufficient that one should suffer.
Anyone who promises to change everything for you all at once is either a fool or a rogue!
Bah! What does it matter? Well, there's nothing hereafter. We are even madder than the fools who kill themselves for a woman. When the earth splits to pieces in space like a dry walnut, our works won't add one atom to its dust.
Civilization will not attain perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.
Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?
Everything is only a dream.
Have you ever reflected that posterity may not be the faultless dispenser of justice that we dream of?
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.
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.
If I cannot overwhelm with my quality, I will overwhelm with my quantity.
If people can just love each other a little bit, they can be so happy.
If something's just, I'll let myself be hacked to bits for it.
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!
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.
One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.
Perfection is such a nuisance that I often regret having cured myself of using tobacco.
Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy.
The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.
The day is not far off when one ordinary carrot may be pregnant with revolution.
The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.
The truth is on the march and nothing will stop it.
There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.
When you have a sorrow that is too great it leaves no room for any other.
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(April 2 is also the birthday of Casanova and Kenneth Tynan.)
Categories: Émile Zola, Quotes of the day
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