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.
Georges BatailleLife has always taken place in a tumult without apparent cohesion, but it only finds its grandeur and its reality in ecstasy and in ecstatic love.
Georges BatailleThe emotional element which gives an obsessive value to communal existence is death.
Georges BatailleThe need to go astray, to be destroyed, is an extremely private, distant, passionate, turbulent truth.
Georges BatailleWe did not lack modestyโon the contraryโbut something urgently drove us to defy modesty together as immodestly as possible.
Georges Bataille