# Quote — Emile Zola, Germinal

> 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.

- 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: [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/emile-zola/germinal/what-misery-and

## 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)