Emile Zola

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

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.

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

Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they've been taught is wrong!

Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?

They dared not peer down into their own natures, down into the feverish confusion that filled their minds with a kind of dense, acrid mist.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

They talked so, with secret hearts, without needing words, talking of other things... They could have suddenly continued their confessions aloud, without ceasing to understand each other.

An entire lifetime would not be long enough for you to exhaust the glance of the young harvest-girl.

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

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

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

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.

She was cold by nature, self-love predominating over passion; rather than being virtuous, she preferred to have her pleasures all to herself.

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

It all seemed a hollow sham now - that strict code, that conscientious virtue that condemned her to the sterile joys of pious women! No, no, she'd had enough of that; she wanted to live!