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

It was at times like this that one of those waves of bestiality ran through the mine, the sudden lust of the male that came over a miner when he met one of these girls...

Her anger was rekindled.’You see, I keep it to myself, but, oh! it’s more than I can stand. Don’t say anything, sir; don’t say anything , or I’ll explode!’He said nothing, and she exploded all...

Over all crowds there seems to float a vague distress, an atmosphere of pervasive melancholy, as if any large gathering of people creates an aura of terror and pity.

Gerçeği gömmeniz boşuna, toprağın altında yol alıyor; bir gün, her yandan fışkıracak, öç bitkileri olarak açılacaktır.

With other women he had not been able to touch their flesh without experiencing the desire to devour it, as though ravenous with an abominable hunger to butcher them. But this one, could he then...

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

Jean-Louis had never had a day’s illness in his life. He was tall and as gnarled as an oak. The sun had baked his skin until it had the colour and toughness and stillness of...

The critics greeted this book with a churlish and horrified outcry. Certain virtuous people, in newspapers no less virtuous, made a grimace of disgust as they picked it up with the tongs to throw it...

Endless love and voluptuous appetite pervaded this stifling nave in which settled the ardent sap of the tropics. Renée was wrapped in the powerful bridals of the earth that gave birth to these dark growths,...

Albine now yielded to him, and Serge possessed her.And the whole garden was engulfed together with the couple in one last cry of love’s passion. The tree-trunks bent as under a powerful wind. The blades...

Monsieur Josserand died very quietly – a victim of his own honesty. He had lived a useless life, and he went off, worthy to the last, weary of all the petty things in life, done...

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

Suçladığım kişilere gelince: Hiçbirini tanımıyorum. Onları hiç görmedim. Kendilerine karşı ne hıncım var, ne kinim. Onlar benim için topluma kötülük eden kişilerden, kafalardan başka birşey değildir. Benim burada yaptığım şey gerçeğin ve adaletin ortaya çıkmasını...

As if one killed by calculation! A person kills only from an impulse that springs from his blood and sinews, from the vestiges of ancient struggles, from the need to live and the joy of...

This was the time when the rush for the spoils filled a corner of the forest with the yelping of hounds, the cracking of whips, the flaring of torches. The appetites let loose were satisfied...

If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.

The thing is, work has simply swamped my whole existence. Slowly but surely it’s robbed me of my mother, my wife, and everything that meant anything to me. It’s like a germ planted in the...

He was possessed now with that obsession for the cross in which so many lips have worn themselves away on crucifixes.

The shrub that half concealed her was a malignant plant, a Madagascan tanghin tree with wide, box-like leaves with whitish stems, whose smallest veins distilled a venomous fluid. At a moment when Louise and Maxime...

There’s only one thing that warms my heart, and that is the thought that we are going to sweep away these bourgeois.

Never subject to the rules, believing that the correct judgement and healthy nature keep her in the honesty she lived in.

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

Bu suçlamalarda bulunurken, 29 temmuz 1881 tarihli Basın Yasasının 30 ve 31. maddelerine karşı geldiğimi, bu yasanın lekeleme suçlarına ceza belirlediğini bilmiyor değilim. İsteyerek kendimi tehlikeye atıyorum.

She might have liked to try to strangle him with those slender fingers of hers, but she wanted to make a job of it and this great patience with which she waited for her claws...

All of a sudden, in the good-natured child, the woman stood revealed, a disturbing woman with all the impulsive madness of her sex, opening the gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was still...

Death had to take her little by little, bit by bit, dragging her along to the bitter end of the miserable existence she’d made for herself. They never even knew what she did die of....

For a few moments, raising his arms desperately, the Reverend Mouret implored Heaven. His shoulder-blades cracked, with such fantastic force did he pray. But soon enough his arms fell to his sides, his hopes abashed....

The Empire was on the point of turning Paris into the bawdy house of Europe. The gang of fortune-seekers who had succeeded in stealing a throne required a reign of adventures, shady transactions, sold consciences,...

There Albine lay, panting, exhausted by love, her hands clutched closer and closer to her heart, breathing her last. She parted her lips, seeking the kiss which should obliterate her, and then the hyacinths and...

They again kissed each other and fell asleep. The patch of light on the ceiling now seemed to be assuming the shape of a terrified eye, that stared wildly and fixedly upon the pale, slumbering...

When younger, he had been fun-loving to the point of tedium.

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

En sonra, birinci savaş konseyini, bir sanığa gizli kalan bir belgeye dayanarak hüküm giydirdiği için hukuku çiğnemekle suçluyorum. İkinci savaş konseyini de üstten gelen emre uyarak, bir suçluyu, suçunu bile bile temize çıkarıp ağır adli...

The fate of animals is of far greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous.

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

Living in musty shadows and dismal, oppressive silence, Thérèse could see her whole life stretching out before her totally void, bringing night after night the same cold bed and morning after morning the same empty...

La certitude d’avoir empêche de désirer.

In Paris, everything’s for sale: wise virgins, foolish virgins, truth and lies, tears and smiles.

…the water was scarcely inviting; for, through fear lest the output of the source should not suffice, the Fathers of the Grotto only allowed the water of the baths to be changed twice a day....

When sometimes, behind his back, they called him a tyrant, he merely smiled and uttered this profound observation: “If some day I turn liberal, they will say I have let them down.

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.

The truth is on the march and nothing will stop it.

Bir tek tutkum var; Bunca acılar çeken ve mutluluğa hakkı olan insanlık adına duyduğum aydınlık tutkusu. Coşkulu protestom, yüreğimden kopan çığlıktan başka bir şey değildir. Beni ağır ceza mahkemesi önüne çıkarmayı göze alsınlar ve herkesin...

Kings may usurp thrones, republics may be established, but the town scarcely stirs. Plassan sleeps while Paris fights.

She [Nana] listened to his [Steiner’s] propositions, turning them down every time with a shake of the head and that provocative laughter which is peculiar to full-bodied blondes.

Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.

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

Etre pauvre à Paris, c’est être pauvre deux fois.

But his doubts were again coming back to him; when you needed a miracle to gain belief, it means that you are incapable of believing. There is no need for the Almighty to prove His...