Source material of quote
Posted by TinTexas on May 01, 2008 · Member since Aug 2006 · 1216 posts
I want to find the publication (book, newspaper, memoir, etc.) where the Emile Zola quote "The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of man.” first appeared. I've googled it and only found websites where the quote is used, mostly animal rights related blogs and articles. I'd like to read the source to get the context of the circumstances that prompted him to write/say that. We have some extraordinarily well read people at vegweb so I thought I'd post it here and yahoo answers and see where I get the answer from first. :D
Did you check Wikipedia?
Did you check Wikipedia?
Yes
i've not read much zola myself, but i had some downtime at work yesterday so i did a search too... and also came up with nothing! i even searched the french version of "the human beast" (sounded like a plausible source), but alas, nada. maybe he just kinda blurted it out one day in passing and someone wrote it down. ;)
i've not read much zola myself, but i had some downtime at work yesterday so i did a search too... and also came up with nothing! i even searched the french version of "the human beast" (sounded like a plausible source), but alas, nada. maybe he just kinda blurted it out one day in passing and someone wrote it down. ;)
They then had to have published it somewhere for it to have survived for the 100+ years since Zola's death. If the story was, "I was having dinner with Emile Zola and mentioned that I felt silly for putting the baby bird back in his nest. Emile replied, 'The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of man.'" That would be cool but I'd just like to know.
There's a Ben Franklin quote that I have on a bumper sticker magnet on my car. "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." http://www.cafepress.com/buy/Benjamin+Franklin/-/pv_design_prod/id_7976847/p_storeid.26372492/pNo_26372492 Some sources doubt that Franklin actually said that but it's such a great quote and it was published in something that he printed. I researched that quote and was able to find out about it!
yeah i was mostly kidding about him blurting it out. i agree that there has to be a record of it somewhere.
Unless of course it's an apocryphal attribution, like so many "quotes" attributed to Mark Twain and/or Benjamin Franklin, and which they never actually said.
Marie Antoinette never said "Let them eat cake" either.
Granted the Zola quote has more import.
Unless of course it's an apocryphal attribution, like so many "quotes" attributed to Mark Twain and/or Benjamin Franklin, and which they never actually said.
Marie Antoinette never said "Let them eat cake" either.
Granted the Zola quote has more import.
Humphrey Bogart as Rick in Casablanca never said "Play it again, Sam", either. But like Marie Antoinette he said something that morphed into that quote. I've also seen the quote, "I care not for a man's religion that his dog and cat are not the better for it" (as close as I remember it without googling it) attributed to Abraham Lincoln and somebody else whose name escapes me right now. Quotes are "sound bites" from the days before movies, radio and tv and are prone to distortion. I emailed a French Literature professor at a college in the UK and asked him to forward it to a colleague if he doesn't know the answer. It will be interesting to see if I get an answer at all from them.