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.… — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share Image
“After two years' absence she finally returned to chilly Europe, a trifle weary, a trifle sad, disgusted by our banal entertainments, our shrunken landscapes, our impoverished lovemaking. Her soul had remained over there, among the gigantic, poisonous flowers. She missed the mystery of old temples and the ardor of a sky blazing with fever, sensuality and death. The better to… — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share
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… — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share Image
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… — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share
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 Copy Share Image
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… — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share Image
Why, flowers are violent, cruel, terrible and splendid... like love! — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share Image
Sheep run to the slaughterhouse, silent and hopeless, but at least sheep never vote for the butcher who kills them or the people who… — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share Image
Solitude does not consist in living alone; it consists in living with others, with people who take no interest in you. — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share Image
“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… — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share
“Alas, the gates of life never swing open except upon death, never open except upon the palaces and gardens of death. And the universe… — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share Image
“I desire her and I hate her. I would like to take her in my arms and embrace her till she smothered, till she… — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share Image
