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

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
Simply
Past
Gravestones
Gravestone
Cemetery
Illusions
Toes
Illusion

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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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How evil life must be if it were indeed necessary that such imploring cries, such cries of physical and moral wretchedness, should ever and ever ascend to heaven!
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Inability, human incapacity, is the only boundary to an art.
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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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A god of kindness would be charitable to all. Your god of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy.
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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 to grow was in itself a form of enjoyment.
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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.
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If something's just, I'll let myself be hacked to bits for it.
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Why then should money be blamed for all the dirt and crimes it causes? For is love less filthy -- love which creates life?
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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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The only basis for living is believing in life, loving it, and applying the whole force of one's intellect to know it better.
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If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.
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In love 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 end.
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It is not necessary that one should humble oneself to deserve assistance, it is sufficient that one should suffer.
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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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The thought is a deed. Of all deeds she fertilizes the world most.
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Man's highest duty is to protect animals from cruelty.
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Perfection is such a nuisance that I often regret having cured myself of using tobacco.
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Governments are suspicious of literature because it is a force that eludes them.
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A new dynasty is never founded without a struggle. Blood makes good manure.
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