Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?
Emile ZolaThe fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.
Emile ZolaAn entire lifetime would not be long enough for you to exhaust the glance of the young harvest-girl.
Emile ZolaOh, 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 nurseries. You'd like science to give you all the answers at one go, whereas we're only just beginning to understand it, and it'll probably never be anything but an eternal quest. And so you repudiate science, you fall back on religion, and religion won't have you any more. Then you relapse into pessimism...Yes, it's the disease of our age, of the end of the century: you're all inverted Werthers.
Emile Zola