# Quote — Emile Zola, Germinal

> He would have given up everything -- education, comfort, luxurious life and his powerful position as manager -- if only just for one day he could have been the humblest of these poor devils under him and be free with his own body and be oafish enough to beat his wife and take his pleasure with the wives of his neighbors. He found himself wishing he were dying of starvation too, and that his empty belly were twisted with pains that made his brain reel, for perhaps that might deaden this relentless grief! Oh to live like a brute, possessing nothing but freedom to roam in the cornfields with the ugliest and most revolting haulage girl and possess her!

- Author: [Emile Zola](https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola.md)
- Book: [Germinal](https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/germinal.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Zola#Germinal_(1885)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [freedom](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom.md), [desire](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/desire.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/germinal/he-would-have

## More from this book

> Yes, that is your idea, all of you French workmen; you want to unearth a treasure in order to devour it alone afterwards in some lazy, selfish corner. You may cry out as much as you like against the rich, you haven't got courage enough to give back to the poor the money that luck brings you. You will never be worthy of happiness as long as you own anything, and your hatred of the bourgeois proceeds solely from an angry desire to be bourgeois yourselves in their place.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/germinal/yes-that-is-your.md)

> There were men so ambitious that they would wipe the masters' behinds to hear them say thank you.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/germinal/there-were-men.md)

> "Bread! is that enough, idiots!"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/germinal/bread-is-that.md)