French writer & philosopher (1897-1962)
And if the origin of things is not like the ground of the planet that seems to be the base, but like the circular movement that the planet describes around a mobile center, then a car, a clock, or a sewing machine could equally be accepted as the generative principle.
GEORGES BATAILLE
Visions of Excess
Entirety exists within me as exuberance. Only in empty longing, only in an unlucky desire to be consumed simply be the desire to burn with desire, is entirety wholly what it is.
GEORGES BATAILLE
On Nietzsche
If I said decisively, "I have seen God," that which I see would change. Instead of the inconceivable unknown--wildly free before me, leaving me wild and free before it--there would be a dead object and the thing of the theologian, to which the unknown would be subjugated.
GEORGES BATAILLE
Inner Experience
All eroticism has a sacramental character.
GEORGES BATAILLE
Erotism: Death and Sensuality
Sentences will be consigned to museums if the emptiness in writing persists.
GEORGES BATAILLE
On Nietzsche
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
The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge
An abandoned shoe, a rotten tooth, a snub nose, the cook spitting in the soup of his masters are to love what a battle flag is to nationality.
GEORGES BATAILLE
Visions of Excess
Love expresses a need for sacrifice each unity must lose itself in some other which exceeds it. In erotic frenzy the being is led to tear itself apart and lose itself.... Two beings are lost in a convulsion that binds them together. But they only communicate when losing a part of themselves. Communication ties them together with wounds, where their unity and integrity dissipate in fever.
GEORGES BATAILLE
Visions of Excess
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.
GEORGES BATAILLE
Theory of Religion
The analysis of laughter had opened to me points of contact between the fundamentals of a communal and disciplined emotional knowledge and those of discursive knowledge.
GEORGES BATAILLE
Inner Experience
The total person is first disclosed ... in areas of life that are lived frivolously.
GEORGES BATAILLE
On Nietzsche
Sacrifice is nothing other than the production of sacred things.
GEORGES BATAILLE
"The Notion of Expenditure", La Critique Sociale
Moral ends ... are distinct from any excesses they occasion. States of glory and moments of sacredness surpass results intentionally sought.
GEORGES BATAILLE
On Nietzsche
The human foot is commonly subjected to grotesque tortures that deform it and make it rickety. In an imbecilic way it is doomed to corns, calluses, and bunions.
GEORGES BATAILLE
Visions of Excess
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
My Mother, Madame Edwarda and the Dead Man
Every action makes you a fragmentary existence. I hold on to my nature as an entirety only by refusing to act--or at least by denying the superiority of time, which is reserved for action.
GEORGES BATAILLE
On Nietzsche