Quote

The moral pleasure in art, as well as the moral service that art performs, consists in the intelligent gratification of consciousness.

Susan Sontag

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Susan Sontag
Age: 71 †
Born: 1933
Born: January 16
Died: 2004
Died: December 28
Author
Essayist
Feminist
Film Critic
Film Director
Historian
Human Rights Activist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
New York City
New York
Susan Rosenblatt
Wells
Gratification
Well
Consists
Service
Intelligent
Consciousness
Pleasure
Moral
Art
Performs

More quotes by Susan Sontag

Image
A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.
Susan Sontag
Image
The fantasies inspired by TB in the last century, by cancer now, are responses to a disease thought to be intractable and capricious--that is, a disease not understood--in an era in which medicine's central premise is that all diseases can be cured.
Susan Sontag
Image
As objects of contemplation, images of the atrocious can answer to several different needs. To steel oneself against weakness. To make oneself more numb. To acknowledge the existence of the incorrigible.
Susan Sontag
Image
Most of my reading is rereading.
Susan Sontag
Image
I have always been full of lust - as I am now - but I have always been placing conceptual obstacles in my own path.
Susan Sontag
Image
Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong, mutual dependencies.
Susan Sontag
Image
Nature in America has always been suspect, on the defensive, cannibalized by progress. In America, every specimen becomes a relic.
Susan Sontag
Image
Desire has no history.
Susan Sontag
Image
I certainly identify myself as a feminist.
Susan Sontag
Image
What interests me is to understand the nature of the modern.
Susan Sontag
Image
Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible of making it stand still. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images — as, according to Proust, most ambitious of voluntary prisoners, one can't possess the present but one can possessthe past.
Susan Sontag
Image
Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.
Susan Sontag
Image
Love is friendship on fire -- anonymous
Susan Sontag
Image
What pornography is really about, ultimately, isn't sex but death.
Susan Sontag
Image
The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.
Susan Sontag
Image
Taste tends to develop very unevenly. It's rare that the same person has good visual taste and good taste in people and taste in ideas.
Susan Sontag
Image
In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it.
Susan Sontag
Image
One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves.
Susan Sontag
Image
Strictly speaking, it is doubtful that a photograph can help us understand anything.
Susan Sontag
Image
To photograph is to confer importance.
Susan Sontag