Octave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeauwas a French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde. His work has been translated into thirty languages...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth16 February 1848
CountryFrance
attached check civilization civilized conflict cowardly dead desires fashion feeling free ideas joy lack life lose moment moral mortal obliged people permanent poisoned pretend pretenses respect social suppress troubled vain wound
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.
stupidity bombs terrorism
The greatest danger of a terrorist's bomb is in the explosion of stupidity that it provokes.
funeral dying faces
Come now, don't make such a funeral face. It isn't dying that's sad; it's living when you're not happy.
humanity doe murder
Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he will always see that word: murder—immortally inscribed upon the pediment of that vast slaughterhouse—humanity.
business stupid danger
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.
and-love murder born
Murder is born of love, and love attains the greatest intensity in murder.
bombs explosion french-writer
The greatest danger of bombs is in the explosion of stupidity that they provoke.