Quote

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

Georges Bataille

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Georges Bataille
Age: 64 †
Born: 1897
Born: September 10
Died: 1962
Died: July 9
Author
Drawer
Librarian
Philosopher
Writer
Bilhom
Pierre Angélique
George Bataille
Joruju Bataiyu
G. Bataiyu
Lord Auch
Pierre Angelique
Free
Burdened
Men
Servitude
Deliberate
Sovereign
Crush
Condition
Conditions
Servility
Literature
Crushes

More quotes by Georges Bataille

Image
Inner experience ... is not easily accessible and, viewed from the outside by intelligence, it would even be necessary to see in it a sum of distinct operations, some intellectual, others aesthetic, yet others moral. ... It is only from within, lived to the point of terror, that it appears to unify that which discursive thought must separate.
Georges Bataille
Image
The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are engaged in the same battle. Their blood flows from similar wounds. But the first one gasps and the other one gives.
Georges Bataille
Image
[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.
Georges Bataille
Image
The total person is first disclosed ... in areas of life that are lived frivolously.
Georges Bataille
Image
Life 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 Bataille
Image
Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.
Georges Bataille
Image
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?
Georges Bataille
Image
If I want to realize totality in my consciousness, I have to relate myself to an immense, ludicrous, and painful convulsion of all of humanity.
Georges Bataille
Image
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.
Georges Bataille
Image
The need to go astray, to be destroyed, is an extremely private, distant, passionate, turbulent truth.
Georges Bataille
Image
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.
Georges Bataille
Image
[Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return] is what makes moments caught up in the immanence of return suddenly appear as ends. In every other system, don't forget, these moments are viewed as means: Every moral system proclaims that each moment of life ought to be motivated. Return unmotivates the moment and frees life of ends.
Georges Bataille
Image
Nothing radically changes when instead of human satisfaction, we think of the satisfaction of some heavenly being! God's person displaces the problem and does not abolish it.
Georges Bataille
Image
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.
Georges Bataille
Image
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.
Georges Bataille
Image
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.
Georges Bataille
Image
Eroticism is the approval of life unto death.
Georges Bataille
Image
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.
Georges Bataille
Image
The circumstances of my life are paralyzing.
Georges Bataille
Image
Humanity-attached-to-the-task-of-changing-the-world, which is only a single and fragmentary aspect of humanity, will itself be changed in humanity-as-entirety.
Georges Bataille