Georges Bataille Quotes

The power of death signifies that this real world can only have a neutral image of life, that life's intimacy does not reveal it's dazzling consumption until the moment it gives out.

To choose evil is to choose freedom, emancipation from all restraint.

Sacrifice is nothing other than the production of sacred things.

Naturally, love's the most distant possibility.

Thought does not ennoble us and neither does it differentiate humans from other animals.

The warrior's nobility is like a prostitute's smile, the truth of which is self-interest.

The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.

The fact is, that what de Sade was trying to bring to the surface of the conscious mind was precisely the thing that revolted that mind . . . From the very first he set before the consciousness things which it could not tolerate.

The chaos of the mind cannot constitute a reply to the providence of the universe. All it can be is an awakening in the night, where all that can be heard is anguished poetry let loose.

By the care she lavishes on her toilet, by the concern she has for her beauty set off by her adornment, a woman regards herself as an object always trying to attract men's attention.

A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism.

Only literature could reveal the process of breaking the law - without which the law would have no end - independently of the necessity to create order.

Eroticism is the approval of life unto death.

I teach the art of turning anguish into delight.

The sacred demands the violation of what is normally the object of terrified respect.

At man's core there is a voice that wants him never to give in to fear. But if it is true that in general man cannot give in to fear, at the very least he postpones indefinitely the moment when he will have to confront himself with the object of his fear... when he will no longer have the assistance of reason as guaranteed by God, or when he will no longer have the assistance of God such as reason guaranteed. It is necessary to recoil, but it is necessary to leap, and perhaps one only recoils in order to leap better.

The need to go astray, to be destroyed, is an extremely private, distant, passionate, turbulent truth.

I don't want your love unless you know i am repulsive,and love me even as you know it.

The emotional element which gives an obsessive value to communal existence is death.

Though the immediate impression of rebellion may obscure the fact, the task of authentic literature is nevertheless only conceivable in terms of a desire for fundamental communication with the reader.

The sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space.

The sovereign being is burdened with a servitude that crushes him, and the condition of free men is deliberate servility.

The truth is paradoxical to the extent of being exactly contrary to the usual perception.

You perhaps now know that desire reduces us to pulp.

I think that knowledge enslaves us, that at the base of all knowledge there is a servility, the acceptation of a way of life wherein each moment has meaning only in relation to another or others that will follow it.

I enjoyed the innocence of unhappiness and of helplessness; could I blame myself for a sin which attracted me, which flooded me with pleasure precisely to the extent it brought me to despair?

To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them.

Realism gives me the impression of a mistake. Violence alone escapes the feeling of poverty of those realistic experiences. Only death and desire have the force that oppresses, that takes one's breath away. Only the extremism of desire and death enable one to attain the truth.

Eroticism differs from animal sexuality in that human sexuality is limited by taboos and the domain of eroticism is that of the transgression of these taboos. Desire in eroticism is the desire that triumphs over the taboo. It presupposes man in conflict with himself.

It is clear that the world is purely parodic, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form.

To others, the universe seems decent because decent people have welded eyes. That is why they fear lewdness. They are never frightened by the crowing of a rooster or when strolling under a starry heaven. In general, people savor the "pleasures of the flesh" only on the condition that they may be insipid.

What does physical eroticism signify if not a violation of the very being of its practitioners? – A violation bordering on death, bordering on murder?

In what will survive me I am in harmony with my annihilation.

Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit; to become delightful, happiness must be tainted with poison.

A judgment about life has no meaning except the truth of the one who speaks last, and the mind is at ease only at the moment when everyone is shouting at once and no one can hear a thing.

We have in fact only two certainties in this world - that we are not everything and that we will die.

Obscenity is our name for the uneasiness which upsets the physical state associated with self-possession, with the possession of a recognized and stable individuality.

Indeed, the direction of the future is only there in order to elude us.

But a sort of rupture-in anguish-leaves us at the limit of tears: in such a case we lose ourselves, we forget ourselves and communicate with an elusive beyond.

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

Not every woman is a prostitute, but prostitution is the natural apotheosis of the feminine attitude.

Extreme seductiveness is at the boundary of horror

[F]or academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.

I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.

The circumstances of my life are paralyzing.

Sovereignty, loyalty, and solitude.

It seems impossible, in fact, to judge the eye using any word other than seductive, since nothing is more attractive in the bodies of animals and men. But extreme seductiveness is probably at the boundary of horror.

Incredible nervous state, trepidation beyond words: to be this much in love is to be sick (and I love to be sick).