Octave Mirbeau Quotes

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On the street, men appeared to me like mad ghosts, old skeletons out of joint, whose bones, badly strung together, were falling to the pavement with a strange noise. I saw the necks turning on top of broken spinal columns, hanging upon disjointed clavicles, arms sundered from the trunks, the trunks themselves losing their shape. And all these scraps of human bodies, stripped of their flesh by death, were rushing upon one another, forever spurred on by a homicidal fever, forever driven by pleasure, and they were fighting over foul carrion.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: On the street, men appeared
But one gets tired of everything, even of abusing a person. Paris abandons its puppets which it raises to the throne as quickly as it does its martyrs whom it hoists on the gibbet; in its perpetual hunger for new playthings, it never gets itself excited overly much before the statues of its heroes or at the sight of the blood of its victims.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: But one gets tired of
Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he will always see that word: murder - immortally inscribed upon the pediment of that vast slaughterhouse - humanity.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Wherever he goes, whatever he
Yes, there are some backs on the street
which cry for the knife.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Yes, there are some backs
For to arrive somewhere means to die!
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: For to arrive somewhere means
You know how much Annie loved pearls. She owned some incomparable specimens ... the most marvelous, I believe, that ever existed. You also remember the almost physical joy, the carnal ecstasy, with which she adorned herself with them. Well, when she was sick that passion became a mania with her ... a fury, like love! All day long she loved to touch them, caress them and kiss them; she made cushions of them, necklaces, capes, cloaks. Then this extraordinary thing happened; the pearls died on her skin: first they tarnished, little by little ... little by little they grew dim, and no light was reflected in their luster any more and, in a few days, tainted by the disease, they changed into tiny balls of ash. They were dead, dead like people, my darling. Did you know that pearls had souls? I think it's fascinating and delicious. And since then, I think of it every day.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: You know how much Annie
The greatest danger of bombs is in the explosion of stupidity that they provoke.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: The greatest danger of bombs
To Priests, Soldiers, Judges- to men who rear, lead or govern men I dedicate these pages of murder and blood.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: To Priests, Soldiers, Judges- to
Why, flowers are violent, cruel, terrible, splendid ... like love.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Why, flowers are violent, cruel,
The universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden ... Passions, greed, hatred, and lies; social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: The universe appears to me
The poor are the human manure in which grow the harvests of life, the harvests of joy which the rich reap.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: The poor are the human
While all is new, all is beautiful. That is a well-known song. Yes, and the next day the air changes into another one equally well known.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: While all is new, all
While I was an honorable man in her eyes, she did not love me. But the minute she understood what I was, when she breathed the true and foul odor of my soul, love was born in her – for she does love me! Well, well! There is nothing real, then, except evil.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: While I was an honorable
Everything she heard, everything she saw seemed to be in disagreement with her own manner of understanding and feeling. To her, the sun did not appear red enough, the nights pale enough, the skies deep enough. Her fleeting conception of things and beings condemned her fatally to a perversion of her senses, to vagaries of the spirit and left her nothing but the torment of an unachieved longing, the torture of unfulfilled desires.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Everything she heard, everything she
Have you ever been at a festival when you were sad or ill? Well, then you've felt how much your sadness was irritated and exasperated, as by an insult, by the joyful faces and the beauty of things. It's an intolerable feeling. Think of what it must mean to a victim who is going to die under torture. Think how much the torture is multiplied in his flesh and his soul by all the splendour which surrounds him; and how much more atrocious is his agony, how much more hopelessly atrocious, darling!
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Have you ever been at
I desire her and I hate her. I would like to take her in my arms and embrace her till she smothered, till she was crushed and I could drink death from her gushing veins.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: I desire her and I
Perverse? Because they obey the only law of life; because they are satisfied with the only need of life, which is love? But consider, milady, the flower is only a reproductive organ. Is there anything healthier, stronger, or more beautiful than that? These marvelous petals, these silks, these velvets... these soft, supple, and caressing materials are the curtains of the alcove, the draperies of the bridal chamber, the perfumed bed where they unite, where they pass their ephemeral and immortal life, swooning with love. What an admirable example for us!" he spread the petals of the flower, counted the stamens laden with pollen, and he spoke again, his eyes swimming in a comical ecstasy: "See, milady; one, two, five, ten, twenty. See how they quiver! Look! Sometimes twenty males are required for the delight of a single female! he! he! he! Sometimes it's the opposite." one by one he tore off the petals of the flower: "And when they are gorged with love, then the curtains of the bed are torn away, the draperies of the chamber wither and fall; and the flowers die, because they know well they have nothing more to do. They die, to be reborn later, and once again, to love!
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Perverse? Because they obey the
Murder is born of love, and love attains the greatest intensity in murder.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Murder is born of love,
Nature's constantly screaming with all its shapes and scents: love each other! Love each other! Do as the flowers. There's only love.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Nature's constantly screaming with all
I was thinking of love,' I replied in a tone of reproach, 'and here you are talking to me again - forever - about torture!'
'Doubtless! since it's the same thing -
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: I was thinking of love,'
Sheep run to the slaughterhouse, silent and hopeless, but at least sheep never vote for the butcher who kills them or the people who devour them. More beastly than any beast, more sheepish than any sheep, the voter names his own executioner and chooses his own devourer, and for this precious 'right' a revolution was fought.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Sheep run to the slaughterhouse,
The Occidental snobbery which is invading us, the gunboats, rapid-fire guns, long-range rifles, explosives ... what else? Everything which makes death collective, administrative and bureaucratic - all the filth of your progress, in fact - is destroying, little by little, our beautiful traditions of the past.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: The Occidental snobbery which is
You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That'€s the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: You're obliged to pretend respect
I did not know what she suffered from, but I knew that her malady must have been horrible; I knew that from the way she used to embrace me.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: I did not know what
Alas, the gates of life never swing open except upon death, never open except upon the palaces and
gardens of death. And the universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden ... What I
say today, and what I heard, exists and cries and howls beyond this garden, which is no more than a
symbol to me of the entire earth.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Alas, the gates of life
Great ladies ... are like the best sauces
it is better not to know how they are made.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Great ladies ... are like
VOTERS STRIKE!
...above all, remember that he who solicits your vote is by that very fact revealed as a scoundrel, since in exchange for your advantage and fortune he promises a cornucopia of marvels he'll never deliver because he hasn't the power to deliver them. the man you elect represents neither your misery nor your aspirations- nor anything else of yours- but rather his own interests, which are all opposed to yours...do not imagine that the sorry spectacle at which you assist today is peculiar to one epoch or one regime, and that it will pass away. all epochs and all regimes are worth the same- that is, they are worthless. so go home, my good chap, and go on strike against universal suffrage. I tell you, you've nothing to lose... and at least it should keep you amused for a while. I tell you, good chap! go home! go on strike!
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: VOTERS STRIKE!<br />...above all, remember
Children, by nature, are keen, passionate and curious. What was referred to as laziness is often merely an awakening of sensitivity, a psychological inability to submit to certain absurd duties, and a natural result of the distorted, unbalanced education given to them. This laziness, which leads to an insuperable reluctance to learn, is, contrary to appearances, sometimes proof of intellectual superiority and a condemnation of the teacher.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Children, by nature, are keen,
As soon as I find myself in the presence of a rich man, I cannot help looking upon him as an exceptional and beautiful being, as a sort of marvellous divinity, and, in spite of myself, surmounting my will and my reason, I feel rising, from the depths of my being, toward this rich man, who is very often an imbecile, and sometimes a murderer, something like an incense of admiration. Is it not stupid? And why? Why?
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: As soon as I find
To take something from a person and keep it for oneself: that is robbery. To take something from one person and then turn it over to another in exchange for as much money as you can get: that is business. Robbery is so much more stupid, since it is satisfied with a single, frequently dangerous profit; whereas in business it can be doubled without danger.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: To take something from a
The greatest danger of a terrorist's bomb is in the explosion of stupidity that it provokes.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: The greatest danger of a
I understood that the law of the world was strife; an inexorable, murderous law, which was not content with arming nation against nation but which hurled against one another the children of the same race, the same family, the same womb. I found none of the lofty abstractions of honor, justice, charity, patriotism of which our standard books are so full, on which we are brought up, with which we are lulled to sleep, through which they hypnotize us in order the better to deceive the kind little folk, to enslave them the more easily, to butcher them the more foully.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: I understood that the law
(Our) thoughts feelings, and loves are a whirlwind. Everywhere life is rushing insanely like a cavalry charge. . . . Everything around a man jumps, dances, gallops in a movement out of phase with his own.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: (Our) thoughts feelings, and loves
Think what it must be like for a victim about to die under torture. Think how the torture must be multiplied in his flesh and soul with the splendour that surrounds him! And how his agony must become more atrocious, more desperately atrocious, dearest heart!"
"I was thinking about love," I replied reproachfully. "And you continuously talk about torture!"
"Why not - since it's the same thing!
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Think what it must be
Come now, don't make such a funeral face. It isn't dying that's sad; it's living when you're not happy.
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Come now, don't make such
Monsters, monsters! But there are no monsters! What you call monsters are superior forms, or forms beyond your understanding. Aren't the gods monsters? Isn't a man of genius a monster, like a tiger or a spider, like all individuals who live beyond social lies, in the dazzling and divine immortality of things? Why, I too then-am a monster!
Octave Mirbeau Quotes: Monsters, monsters! But there are
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