EMILE ZOLA QUOTES
French writer (1840-1902)
Dreyfus is innocent. I swear it! I stake my life on it -- my honor! At this solemn moment, in the presence of this tribunal which is the representative of human justice, before you, gentlemen of the jury, who are the very incarnation of the country, before the whole of France, before the whole world, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. By my forty years of work, by the authority that this toil may have given me, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. By all I have now, by the name I have made for myself, by my works which have helped for the expansion of French literature, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. May all that melt away, may my works perish if Dreyfus be not innocent! He is innocent. All seems against me -- the two Chambers, the civil authority, the military authority, the most widely-circulated journals, the public opinion which they have poisoned. And I have for me only an ideal of truth and justice. But I am quite calm; I shall conquer. I was determined that my country should not remain the victim of lies and injustice. I may be condemned here. The day will come when France will thank me for having helped to save her honor.
EMILE ZOLA
appeal for Captain Alfred Dreyfus delivered at his trial for libel, Feb. 22, 1898
In my view you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it.
EMILE ZOLA
attributed, Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography
There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.
EMILE ZOLA
letter to Paul Cezanne, Apr. 16, 1860
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."
EMILE ZOLA
attributed, And I Quote
I do not seek to defend myself.... My work will defend me. It is a work of truth, the first novel of the people which does not lie and which possesses the odour of the people. And one must not conclude that all the lower classes are bad, for my characters are not bad, they are only ignorant and spoilt by the surroundings of rough work and misery amidst which they live. Only, it is necessary to read my novels, to understand them, to see them clearly as a whole, before entertaining the grotesque and odious judgments formed beforehand, which are circulating about my person and my works. Ah! If it were only known how my friends laugh at the amazing legend which serves to amuse the crowd! If it were only known that the blood-drinker, the ferocious novelist, is a worthy citizen, a man of study and art, living discreetly in his corner, and whose sole ambition is to leave behind him a work as vast and lifelike as he can.
EMILE ZOLA
preface, The Assommoir
From the moment I start a new novel, life's just one endless torture. The first few chapters may go fairly well and I may feel there's still a chance to prove my worth, but that feeling soon disappears and every day I feel less and less satisfied. I begin to say the book's no good, far inferior to my earlier ones, until I've wrung torture out of every page, every sentence, every word, and the very commas begin to look excruciatingly ugly. Then, when it's finished, what a relief! Not the blissful delight of the gentleman who goes into ecstasies over his own production, but the resentful relief of a porter dropping a burden that's nearly broken his back ... Then it starts all over again, and it'll go on starting all over again till it grinds the life out of me, and I shall end my days furious with myself for lacking talent, for not leaving behind a more finished work, a bigger pile of books, and lie on my death-bed filled with awful doubts about the task I've done, wondering whether it was as it ought to have been, whether I ought not to have done this or that, expressing with my last dying breath the wish that I might do it all over again!
EMILE ZOLA
The Masterpiece
Have you ever reflected that posterity may not be the faultless dispenser of justice that we dream of? One consoles oneself for being insulted and denied, by reyling on the equity of the centuries to come; just as the faithful endure all the abominations of this earth in the firm belief of another life, in which each will be rewarded according to his deserts. But suppose Paradise exists no more for the artist than it does for the Catholic, suppose that future generations prolong the misunderstanding and prefer amiable little trifles to vigorous works! Ah! What a sell it would be, eh? To have led a convict's life--to have screwed oneself down to one's work--all for a mere delusion!
EMILE ZOLA
The Masterpiece
A new dynasty is never founded without a struggle. Blood makes good manure.
EMILE ZOLA
The Fortune of the Rougons
Classical education has deformed everything, and has imposed upon us as geniuses men of correct, facile talent, who follow the beaten track.
EMILE ZOLA
The Masterpiece
Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?
EMILE ZOLA
The Joy of Life
Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.
EMILE ZOLA
attributed, The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations: Cutting Comments on Burning Issues
Truth is on the march; nothing can stop it now.
EMILE ZOLA
manifesto, Le Figaro
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.
EMILE ZOLA
The Joy of Life
A god of kindness would be charitable to all. Your god of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy.
EMILE ZOLA
Truth
My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.
EMILE ZOLA
"J'accuse!"
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.
EMILE ZOLA
attributed, Dreyfus: His Life and Letters
Respectable people ... What bastards!
EMILE ZOLA
The Belly of Paris
The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.
EMILE ZOLA
The Masterpiece
If people can just love each other a little bit, they can be so happy.
EMILE ZOLA
Germinal
Everything is only a dream.
EMILE ZOLA
La Reve