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.
Octave MirbeauWhen one tears away the veils and shows them naked, people's souls give off such a pungent smell of decay.
Octave MirbeauWherever he goes, whatever he does, he will always see that word: murder—immortally inscribed upon the pediment of that vast slaughterhouse—humanity.
Octave MirbeauNature’s constantly screaming with all its shapes and scents: love each other! Love each other! Do as the flowers. There’s only love.
Octave MirbeauDesire can attain the darkest human terror and give an actual ideal of hell and its horror.
Octave MirbeauTo 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.
Octave Mirbeau