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.
