# Quote — Emile Zola, Germinal

> Men were springing up, a black avenging host was slowly germinating in the furrows, thrusting upward for the harvests of future ages. And very soon their germination would crack the earth asunder.

- Author: [Emile Zola](https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola.md)
- Book: [Germinal](https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/germinal.md)
- Original (fr): Des hommes poussaient, une armée noire, vengeresse, qui germait lentement dans les sillons, grandissant pour les récoltes du siècle futur, et dont la germination allait faire bientôt éclater la terre.
- 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/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/germinal/men-were-springing

## 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)