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
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.
stupidity bombs terrorism
The greatest danger of a terrorist's bomb is in the explosion of stupidity that it provokes.
beautiful stupid men
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?
bombs explosion french-writer
The greatest danger of bombs is in the explosion of stupidity that they provoke.
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.
real eye men
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.
would-be elements facts
Woman possesses the cosmic force of an element, an invincible force of destruction, like nature's. She is, in herself alone, all nature! Being the matrix of life, she is by that very fact the matrix of death - since it is from death that life is perpetually reborn, and since to annihilate death would be to kill life at its only fertile source.
and-love murder born
Murder is born of love, and love attains the greatest intensity in murder.
beauty beautiful song
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.
flower like-love violent
Why, flowers are violent, cruel, terrible, splendid...like love.
life going-away should
Nothing comes at all -- never anything. And I cannot accustom myself to that. It is this monotony, this absolute fixity in life, that is the hardest thing for me to endure. I should like to go away from here. Go away? But where and how? I do not know, and I stay.
joy poverty rich
The poor are the human manure in which grow the harvests of life, the harvests of joy which the rich reap.
depression mental-illness inexplicable
There is a diabolical streak in me, a troublesome and inexplicable perversity.
flower scent shapes
Nature’s constantly screaming with all its shapes and scents: love each other! Love each other! Do as the flowers. There’s only love.