Emile Zola Top 10 Quotes

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

Emile Zola (Les Rougon-Macquart - The Masterpiece, 1885)

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

Emile Zola (Les Rougon-Macquart - La Bête humaine, 1890)

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 Cézanne, 1860)

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

If I cannot overwhelm with my quality, I will overwhelm with my quantity.

Emile 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.

Emile Zola (J'accuse!, 1898)

Everything is only a dream.

Emile Zola (Les Rougon-Macquart - The Dream, 1888)

Truth is on the march; nothing can stop it now.

Emile Zola (La Figaro, 1897)

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

Emile 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!

Emile Zola