“I would rather die of passion than of boredom.”

“But you said so yourself,the poor lass will die of it...Do you really want her to die?'Yes, I'd rather she died than have a bad life.”

“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 with others. Meanwhile he blamed his own idleness for it, he ended by being ashamed of it.”

“Crever pour crever, je préfère crever de passion que de crever d'ennui !”

“Raising her arms, she defied Heaven. 'So,' she cried, 'you prefer your God to me? You think he is stronger than I am. You think he will love you better than I would? Ah, what a child you are! Do stop talking such twaddle. What we are going to do is go back to the garden together, and love each other, be happy and free, for that is life.”

“I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.”

“‎"Well then! it was the end; his ruin was complete. Even if he mended the cables and lit the fires, where would he find men? Another fortnight's strike and he would be bankrupt. And in this certainty of disaster he no longer felt any hatred of the Montsou bandits; he felt that all had a hand in it, that it was a general agelong fault. They were brutes, no doubt, but brutes who could not read, and who were dying of hunger.”