I can no more curse her than I can the fire that consumes towns and forests, the water which sinks ships, or the tiger carrying bleeding prey between its jaws into the depths of the jungle.
The Torture Garden, Octave Mirabeau
So small and fragile - a microcosm of nature, with all the beauty of its strength. It contains the world. Ah, frail and relentless organism heading for its realisation! Flowers have no time for sentiment, milady. They make love, nothing but love... And they do it all the time and in every way they can. It's all they think about. And they're right. Perverse? Because they obey life's only need, which is love? But consider this! The flower is nothing but a sexual organ, milady. Is anything healthier, stronger and more beautiful than a sexual organ? There marvellous petals, these silks, these velvets, these soft, supple and caressing fabrics - they are curtains of the alcove, the drapperies of the nuptial chamber, the perfumed bed where sexes are united, where they pass their fleeting and immortal life enraptured with love. What an admirable example they set us!
The Torture Garden, Octave Mirabeau
You lie to yourself and to others - you lie about everything that, in the depths of your soul, you recognise as the truth. You are forced to pretend outward respect for people and institutions which you find ridiculous. You remain cowardly attached to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn and which you know to lack all foundation. Its the permanent contradictions between your ideas and desires on the one hand, and all the dead forms and phantoms of your civilisation on the other that makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because every moment the free play of your strength is restrained, impeded and checked. Thats the poisonous and mortal wound of the civilised world.
The Torture Garden, Octave Mirabeau
I realized that the very thing that held me to her was the frightful rottenness of her soul and her crimes of love. She was a monster, and I loved her for being a monster.
The torture garden, Octave Mirabeau
