What everyone agreed was not very nice, was the way Clémence had carried on. Obviously, she wasn’t the kind of girl you’d ask again: she’d ended up showing off everything she’d got, and she’d puked...

Onlar göze aldıklarına göre, ben de göze alacağım. Gerçeği söyleyeceğim, çünkü kendisine kurala uygun olarak başvurulan adaletin bunu eksiksiz olarak yapmaması durumunda, söyleyeceğime söz verdim. Benim görevim konuşmak, suç ortağı olmak istemiyorum. Yoksa gecelerim orada,...

A new dynasty is never founded without a struggle. Blood makes good manure. It will be a good thing for the Rougon family to be founded on a massacre, like many illustrious families.”–Monsieur de Carnavant

Hélène, her eyes once more raised and remote, was deep in a dream. She was Lady Rowena, she was in love, with the deep peaceful passion of a noble soul. This spring morning, the loveliness...

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

Ever since the morning, Pierre had beheld many frightful sufferings in that woeful white train. But none had so distressed his soul as did that wretched female skeleton, liquefying in the midst of its lace...

Perfection is such a nuisance that I often regret having cured myself of using tobacco.

Why then should money be blamed for all the dirt and crimes it causes? For is love less filthy – love which creates life?

The more grievous the sin, the greater the repentance, God was bidding His time.

All round there was a rising tide of beer, widow Désir’s barrels had all been broached, beer had rounded all paunches and was overflowing in all directions, from noses, eyes – and elsewhere. People were...

Evet! Bu utanç verici gösteriyi izliyoruz, borçlar ve suçlar altında ezilmiş kişiler suçsuz ilan ediliyor; buna karşılık onurun ta kendisi, yaşamı lekesiz bir adam cezalandırılıyor. Bir toplum bu noktaya geldiği zaman, artık çürümeye başlamış demektir.

The whole of Paris was lit up. The tiny dancing flames had bespangled the sea of darkness from end to end of the horizon, and now, like millions of stars, they burned with a steady...

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

Art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.

À cette heure, elle voulut le mal, le mal que personne ne commet, le mal qui allait emplir son existence vide et la mettre enfin dans cet enfer dont elle avait toujours peur.

Speculation, speculation!’ she [Caroline Hamelin] mechanically repeated, struggling with her doubts. ‘Ah! the idea of it fills my heart with disturbing anguish.

He [Muffat] experienced a sense of pleasure mingled with remorse, the sort of pleasure peculiar to those Catholics whom the fear of hell spurs on to commit sin.

Il y avait des hommes si ambitieux qu’ils auraient torché les chefs, pour les entendre seulement dire merci.

Gerçek su yüzüne çıkıyor ve hiçbir şey onu durduramayacak. Olay ancak bugün başlıyor, çünkü konumlar ancak bugün açık olarak ortaya çıktı: bir yanda, ışığın parlamasını istemeyen suçlular; öbür yanda ışığın parlaması için canlarını verecek doğrucular....

Her son would be incomparably handsome, good and powerful. He would be the expected Messiah; it is fortunate for humanity that all mothers have this pathetic faith, without it mankind would not have the ever-renascent...

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...

… 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...

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

I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don’t care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.

In love as as in speculation there is much filth; in love also, people think only of their own gratification; yet without love there would be no life, and the world would come to an...

Oui, c’est votre idée, à vous tous, les ouvriers français, déterrer un trésor, pour le manger seul ensuite, dans un coin d’égoïsme et de fainéantise. Vous avez beau crier contre les riches, le courage vous...

Since the same human mire remains beneath, does not all civilisation reduce itself to the superiority of smelling nice and living well?

The festivity had reached that apogee of joy when you face the happy fate of being crushed to death.

The passion for defiling things was inborn in her. It was not enough for her to destroy them, she had to soil them too.

On a pitch black, starless night, a solitary man was trudging along the main road from Marchiennes to Montsou, ten kilometres of cobblestones running straight as a die across the bare plain between fields of...

Haven’t I told you scores of times, that you’re always beginners, and the greatest satisfaction was not in being at the top, but in getting there, in the enjoyment you get out of scaling the...

Quand Hélène revenit […] elle pensait que jamais ils ne s’étaient moins aimés que ce jour-là.

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

Fransa’nın en büyük romancılarından birinin kopardığı “Üstelik bu insanlar uyuyabiliyorlar, eşleri ve çocukları var, onları seviyorlar!” çığlığını her okuyuşlarında yürekleri sızlayacak, kendi kendilerinden, kendi türlerinden utanacak, gerçek adalet özlemini bir kez daha duyacaklar.

At the street corner, a one-storey house built of freestone, but repulsively decrepit and filthy, seemed to command the entrance, like a gaol. And here, indeed, lived La Méchain, like a vigilant proprietess, ever on...

It was always the same; other people gave up loving before she did. They got spoilt, or else they went away; in any case, they were partly to blame. Why did it happen so? She...

He knew that, from now on, every day would be alike, that they would all bring the same sufferings. And he saw the weeks, the months, the years that awaited him, gloomy and implacable, coming...

And then there are always clever people about to promise you that everything will be all right if only you put yourself out a bit… And you get carried away, you suffer so much from...

She wanted to live, and live fully, and to give life, she who loved life! What was the good of existing, if you couldn’t give yourself?

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!

Hélène slowly surveyed the room. In this respectable society, amongst these apparently decent middle-class people, were there none but faithless wives? With her strict provincial morality, she was amazed at the licensed promiscuity of Parisian...

In my view you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it.

Zola’nın italyan kökeni bile bir aşağılama nedeni olur. Bir gazeteci “Yarı-İtalyan, çeyrek Yunan, çeyrek Fransız, üç-dört kez kırma, hiç de güzel bir insanlık örneği değil!” diye yazar.

His remorse was purely physical. Only his body, strained nerves, and cowering flesh were afraid of the drowned man. Conscience played no part in his terrors, and he had not the slightest regret about killing...

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

Hortense and Berthe nodded, as though profoundly impressed by the wisdom of their mother’s pronouncements. She had long since convinced them of the absolute inferiority of men, whose sole function was to marry and to...

Boredom was at the root of Lazare’s unhappiness, an oppressive, unremitting boredom, exuding from everything like the muddy water of a poisoned spring. He was bored with leisure, with work, with himself even more than...

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.

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...