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… — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share Image
When one tears away the veils and shows them naked, people's souls give off such a pungent smell of decay. — 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,… — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share Image
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… — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share Image
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… — Octave Mirbeau Copy Share Image
“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
