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

Emile Zola

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Emile Zola
Age: 62 †
Born: 1840
Born: January 1
Died: 1902
Died: January 1
Art Critic
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Photographer
Playwright
Poet
Political Journalist
Short Story Writer
Theatre Critic
Paris
France
Emile Edouard Charles Antoine Zola
Using
Regret
Perfection
Often
Nuisance
Cured
Tobacco
Smoking

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I do not despair in the least of ultimate triumph. I repeat it with intense conviction.
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Through the centuries, the history of peoples is but a lesson in mutual tolerance.
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Nothing develops intelligence like travel.
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When truth is buried, it grows. It chokes. It gathers such an explosive force that on the day it bursts out, it blows up everything with it.
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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.
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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.
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Governments are suspicious of literature because it is a force that eludes them.
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Since the same human mire remains beneath, does not all civilization reduce itself to the superiority of smelling nice and living well?
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Man's highest duty is to protect animals from cruelty.
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Let us eat, drink and satisfy our coarse appetites, but let us keep our souls sacred and apart.
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Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.
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A new dynasty is never founded without a struggle. Blood makes good manure.
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The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.
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It is not I who am strong, it is reason, it is truth.
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The word realist means nothing to me, because I would subordinate reality to temperament. Give me what is true and I applaud but give me what is individual and alive and I applaud even more.
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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.
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Art for me...is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside of all the rules and all the demands of society.
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Why is it that my heart is so touched whenever I meet a dog lost in our noisy streets? Why do I feel such anguished pity when I see one of these creatures coming and going, sniffing everyone, frightened, despairing of even finding its master?
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I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.
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Every wave is a water sprite who swims in the current, each current is a path which snakes towards my palace, and my palace is fluidly built at the bottom of the lake, in the triangle of earth, fire and water.
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