"You're obliged to pretend respect for people and……" — Octave Mirbeau

"You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you find 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 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

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17 Quotes by Octave Mirbeau

Octave Mirbeau has 17 quotes on this site. A few more worth reading:

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More Absurd Quotes

This quote is filed under Absurd Quotes, one of 832 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:

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When things get so absurd and so stupid and so ridiculous that you just can't bear it, you cannot help… — David Byrne
My turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out… — Lord Byron
The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth. — Albert Camus
I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion. — Albert Camus
The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them… — Albert Camus
In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd. — Miguel de Cervantes

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