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 you despise, condemns, and know lack of 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 off life and all 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.
quote by:
octave mirbeau
quoted: sleeve of
the holy bibletaken from: mirbeau's 1911 novel
the torture garden.
about the quoted person:
french anarchist novelist. see
octave mirbeau for a comprehensive biography.
this quote is taken from
the torture garden, see literature for a synopsis of this book. the quote is taken from the part in which Clara explains to the protagonist of the story why she wants to go to china. she tells him that life in
china is 'free, happy, complete, without conventions, prejudices and laws...'. the quote is taken from her description about living in
europe which is, according to her, a life of lying to yourself.
