On a pitch black, starless night, a solitary man was trudging along the main road from Marchiennes to… — Emile Zola
On a pitch black, starless night, a solitary man was trudging along the main road from Marchiennes to Montsou, ten kilometres of cobblestones running straight as a die across the bare plain between fields of beet.
Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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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.
There were men so ambitious that they would wipe the masters' behinds to hear them say thank you.
"Bread! is that enough, idiots!"
