What misery! and all these girls, broken by fatigue, were silly enough to come here at night and make babies… — Emile Zola
What misery! and all these girls, broken by fatigue, were silly enough to come here at night and make babies, more flesh to toil and suffer! It would never end while they went on getting themselves filled with starvelings. Ought they not rather to stop up their wombs and close their thighs tight against approaching disaster? But then, perhaps he was only harbouring these dismal thoughts because he resented being alone when all the others were pairing off to take their pleasure.
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They, poor devils, were just machine-fodder, they were penned like cattle in housing-estates, the big Companies were gradually dominating their whole lives, regulating slavery, threatening to enlist all the nation’s workers, millions of hands to increase the wealth of a thousand idlers.
If people can just love each other a little bit, they can be so happy.
What idiot imagined that happiness in this world depended on a share-out of wealth? These starry-eyed revolutionaries could demolish society and build a brave new world if they liked, but they would not by so doing add one single joy to man’s lot, nor relieve him of a single pain merely by sharing out the cake. In fact they would only spread out the unhappiness of the world, and some day they would make the very dogs howl with despair by removing them from the simple satisfaction of their instincts and raising them to the unsatisfied yearnings of passion.
