Émile Zola quotes

Émile Zola was a French novelist, playwright, and journalist, considered a leading figure of literary naturalism. His work exposed social injustices and played a major role in the Dreyfus Affair. He remains influential for his powerful advocacy of truth and justice through literature. Here are 63 of his quotes:

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

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

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

Émile Zola

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

Émile Zola

Truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it.

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

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

Émile Zola

I am an artist... I am here to live out loud.

Émile Zola

Don't go on staring at me like that, because you'll wear your eyes out.

Émile Zola

Everything is only a dream.

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

The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.

Émile Zola

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

Émile Zola

Violence has never prospered, you can't remake the world in a day. Anyone who promises to change everything for you all at once is either a fool or a rogue!

Émile Zola

It is a crime that those people who wish to see a generous France take her place as leader of all the free and just nations are being accused of fomenting turmoil in the country, denounced by the very plotters who are conniving so shamelessly to foist this miscarriage of justice on the entire world. It is a crime to lie to the public, to twist public opinion to insane lengths in the service of the vilest death-dealing machinations. It is a crime to poison the minds of the meek and the humble, to stoke the passions of reactionism and intolerance, by appealing to that odious anti-Semitism that, unchecked, will destroy the freedom-loving France of the Rights of Man. It is a crime to exploit patriotism in the service of hatred, and it is, finally, a crime to ensconce the sword as the modern god, whereas all science is toiling to achieve the coming era of truth and justice. Truth and justice, so ardently longed for! How terrible it is to see them trampled, unrecognized and ignored!

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

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.

Émile Zola

It is not I who am strong, it is reason, it is truth.

Émile Zola

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.

Émile Zola

The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.

Émile Zola

If people can just love each other a little bit, they can be so happy.

Émile Zola

When you have a sorrow that is too great it leaves no room for any other.

Émile Zola