Georges Bataille quote: "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."

Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be ta...
GEORGES BATAILLE

Sovereignty, loyalty, and solitude.
GEORGES BATAILLE

Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.
GEORGES BATAILLE

Sanity is the lot of those who are most obtuse, for lucidity destroys one's equilibrium: it is unhea...
GEORGES BATAILLE

Sacrifice is nothing other than the production of sacred things.
GEORGES BATAILLE

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

Life has always taken place in a tumult without apparent cohesion, but it only finds its grandeur an...
GEORGES BATAILLE

Naturally, love's the most distant possibility.
GEORGES BATAILLE

The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are...
GEORGES BATAILLE

Each of us is incomplete compared to someone else -- an animal's incomplete compared to a person... ...
GEORGES BATAILLE

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of...
GEORGES BATAILLE

To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For b...
GEORGES BATAILLE

A judgment about life has no meaning except the truth of the one who speaks last, and the mind is at...
GEORGES BATAILLE

At man's core there is a voice that wants him never to give in to fear. But if it is true that in ge...
GEORGES BATAILLE

Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by...
GEORGES BATAILLE

Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret a...
GEORGES BATAILLE

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

Nothing is more necessary or stronger in us than rebellion.
GEORGES BATAILLE

Life has always taken place in a tumult without apparent cohesion, but it only finds its grandeur ...
GEORGES BATAILLE

The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to u...
GEORGES BATAILLE

Each of us is incomplete compared to someone else - an animal's incomplete compared to a person....
GEORGES BATAILLE

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

We pedaled rapidly, without laughing or speaking, peculiarly satisfied with our mutual presence, aki...
GEORGES BATAILLE

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of...
GEORGES BATAILLE

Laughing at the universe liberated my life. I escape its weight by laughing. I refuse any intellectu...
GEORGES BATAILLE

If poetry introduces the strange, it does so by means of the familiar. The poetic is the familiar di...
GEORGES BATAILLE

My conduct with my friends is motivated: each being is, I believe, incapable on his own, of going to...
GEORGES BATAILLE

Under the present conditions, everything conspires to obscure the basic movement that tends to resto...
GEORGES BATAILLE

Man always becomes other. Man is the animal who continually differs from himself.
GEORGES BATAILLE

Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret a...
GEORGE BATAILLE

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

finds its grandeur and its reality in ecstasy and in ecstatic love
GEORGE BATAILLE

Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be ta...
GEORGE BATAILLE

To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For b...
GEORGE BATAILLE

Respect is really only a devious route taken by violence.
GEORGE BATAILLE

In essence, the domain of eroticism is the domain of violence, of violation.
GEORGE BATAILLE

Life has always taken place in a tumult without apparent cohesion, but it only finds its grandeur an...
GEORGE BATAILLE

Naturally, Love's the most distant possibility.
GEORGE BATAILLE

Obscenity is our name for the uneasiness which upsets the physical state associated with self-posses...
GEORGE BATAILLE

I'm not interested in being a candidate. I'm just doing other things now.
GRETCHEN BATAILLE

We are grateful to the Kenan Charitable Trust for setting the stage for the School of the Arts to be...
GRETCHEN BATAILLE

It's just part of the collection. So it's not of concern to us.
GRETCHEN BATAILLE

The stirrings within us have their own fearful excesses; the excesses show which way these stirrings...
GEORGE BATAILLE

I want to do nothing chic, I want to have ideas before beginning a piece.
GEORGES BIZET

In order to act, you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

Writing is not a profession, but a vocation of unhappiness.
GEORGES SIMENON

Art is meant to upset people, science reassures them.
GEORGES BRAGUE

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness
GEORGES SIMENON

I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace is an interlude during war.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a si...
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

On September 17, 1914, Erzberger, the well-known German statesman, an eminent member of the Catholic...
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

A mans life is interesting primarily when he has failedI well know. For its a sign that he tried to ...
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isnt a man of action. Action is a ...
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but hes not a man of action...
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.
GEORGES BERNANOS

Truth exists. Only lies are invented.
GEORGES BRAQUE

A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed--I well know. For it's a sign that he tried...
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

All that I know I learned after I was thirty.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

Do not trust your memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip through it.
GEORGES DUHAMEL

We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory.
GEORGES DUHAMEL

It is always brave to say what everyone thinks.
GEORGES DUHAMEL

America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degen...
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

Life is very interesting if you make mistakes.
GEORGES CARPENTIER

A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he's not a man of actio...
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a...
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

It's better to waste one's youth than to do nothing with it at all.
GEORGES COURTELINE

Out of limitations, new forms emerge
GEORGES BRAQUE

If one has not given everything, one has given nothing.
GEORGES GUYNEMER

A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed -- I well know. For it's a sign that he tri...
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

Who are you to condemn another's sin? He who condemns sin becomes part of it, espouses it.
GEORGES BERNANOS

Art is meant to disturb. Science reassures.
GEORGES BRAQUE

The modern state no longer has anything but rights; it does not recognize duties any more.
GEORGES BERNANOS

It's a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so.
GEORGES BERNANOS

The wish to pray is a prayer in itself. God can ask no more than that of us.
GEORGES BERNANOS

A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.
GEORGES BERNANOS

What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing wat...
GEORGES BERNANOS

War is too important a matter to be left to the military.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to co...
GEORGES BERNANOS

No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.
GEORGES BERNANOS

What does the truth matter? Haven't we mothers all given our sons a taste for lies, lies which from ...
GEORGES BERNANOS

And what have you laymen made of hell? A kind of penal servitude for eternity, on the lines of your ...
GEORGES BERNANOS

I know the compassion of others is a relief at first. I don't despise it. But it can't quench pain, ...
GEORGES BERNANOS

Faith is not a thing which one loses, we merely cease to shape our lives by it.
GEORGES BERNANOS

Purity is not imposed upon us as though it were a kind of punishment, it is one of those mysterious ...
GEORGES BERNANOS

God ordains that beggars should beg for greatness, as for all else, when greatness shines out of the...
GEORGES BERNANOS

Fact is Our Lord knew all about the power of money: He gave capitalism a tiny niche in His scheme of...
GEORGES BERNANOS

It is the perpetual dread of fear, the fear of fear, that shapes the face of a brave man.
GEORGES BERNANOS

The world is eaten up by boredom. You can't see it all at once. It is like dust. You go about and ne...
GEORGES BERNANOS

When you think of the huge uninterrupted success of a book like Don Quixote, you're bound to realize...
GEORGES BERNANOS

In order to conquer, what we need is to dare, still to dare, and always to dare.
GEORGES DANTON

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.
GEORGES BERNANOS

Africa is destined to anarchy. It is turning into 36 Haitis, with 36 Duvaliers, full of Cadillacs, b...
GEORGES BIDAULT

I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most pleasant is with women, the...
GEORGES POMPIDOU

Art is harmony. Harmony is the analogy of contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of ...
GEORGES SEURAT

Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented.
GEORGES BRAQUE

I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.
GEORGES DUHAMEL

As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the superna...
GEORGES BIZET

Once an object has been incorporated in a picture it accepts a new destiny.
GEORGES BRAQUE

Little things seem nothing, but they give peace, like those meadow flowers which individually seem o...
GEORGES BERNANOS

Some say they see poetry in my paintings; I see only science.
GEORGES SEURAT

The lake and the mountains have become my landscape, my real world.
GEORGES SIMENON

Originality depends only on the character of the drawing and the vision peculiar to each artist.
GEORGES SEURAT

The swimmer adrift on the open seas measures his strength, and strives with all his muscles to keep ...
GEORGES DUHAMEL

Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes afterward.
GEORGES BERNANOS

Who are you to condemn another's sin? He who condemns sin becomes part of it, espouses it.
GEORGES BERNANOS

Faith is not a thing which one 'loses', we merely cease to shape our lives by it.
GEORGES BERNANOS

What does the truth matter? Haven't we mothers all given our sons a taste for lies, lies which f...
GEORGES BERNANOS

Hope is a risk that must be run.
GEORGES BERNANOS

It's a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so.
GEORGES BERNANOS

Hell, madam, is to love no longer.
GEORGES BERNANOS

Religion is a means of exploitation employed by the strong against the weak; religion is a cloak of ...
GEORGES BIZET

In the beds which the piety of the public has prepared on every side, stricken men await the verdict...
GEORGES DUHAMEL

The richness of the world, all artificial pleasures, have the taste of sickness and give off a smell...
GEORGES ROUAULT

What a beautiful art, but what a wretched profession.
GEORGES BIZET

A mans life is interesting primarily when he has failed. I well know. For its a sign that he tried t...
GEORGES CLéMENCEAU

For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh.
GEORGES ROUAULT

Do not trust your memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip through it. - ...
GEORGES DUHAMEL

We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory. - The H...
GEORGES DUHAMEL

War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

In order to act, you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed f...
GEORGES BERNANOS

Little things seem nothing, but they give peace, like those meadow flowers which individually seem ...
GEORGES BERNANOS

Art is made to disturb, science reassures.
GEORGES BRAQUE

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.
GEORGES SIMENON

The older the layers, the more each of them is uniform over a great extent; the newer the layers, th...
GEORGES CUVIER

I have always tried to write in a simple way, using down-to-earth and not abstract words.
GEORGES SIMENON

Can there be anything more sad than a girl dying on the day of her first communion, in her new dress...
GEORGES RODENBACH

War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

It's better to waste one's youth than to do nothing with it at all.
GEORGES COURTELINE

A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed f...
GEORGES BERNANOS

There is no passion like that of a functionary for his function.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degener...
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves he is not a man of action. Action is a lac...
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

Have you never been moved by poor men's fidelity, the image of you they form in their simple minds? ...
GEORGES BERNANOS

It is far easier to make war than to make peace.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

Anyone can revolt. It is more difficult silently to obey our own inner promptings, and to spend our ...
GEORGES ROUAULT

Painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh.
GEORGES ROUAULT

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

We slowed it down to our tempo, played our game. We just lost it in the overtime.
SEAN GEORGES

I adore life but I don't fear death. I just prefer to die as late as possible.
GEORGES SIMENON

Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, ...
GEORGES CUVIER

Have you never been moved by poor men's fidelity, the image of you they form in their simple minds? ...
GEORGES BERNANOS

And what have you laymen made of hell? A kind of penal servitude for eternity, on the lines of your ...
GEORGES BERNANOS

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means
GEORGES BERNANOS

Suffering has roused them from the sleep of gentle life, and every day fills them with a terrible in...
GEORGES DUHAMEL

By voluntarily participating in these programs, and by setting ambitious targets which are more aggr...
GEORGES AUGUSTE

The conscience of an artist worthy of the name is like an incurable disease which causes him endless...
GEORGES ROUAULT

He imitated me so well that I couldn't stand myself any longer.
GEORGES POMPIDOU

Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry.
GEORGES BRAQUE

Hence the same instant which killed the animals froze the country where they lived. This event was s...
GEORGES CUVIER

Few peek through these differing angles and many opt for the accustomed, the habitual, it is mostly ...
GEORGES BERTRAND

A Christian people doesn't mean a lot of goody-goodies. The Church has plenty of stamina, and isn't ...
GEORGES BERNANOS

It was the serene cheerfulness of a man who has no nightmares, who feels at peace with himself and e...
GEORGES SIMENON

The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.
GEORGES BERNANOS

It is one of the most mysterious penalties of men that they should be forced to confide the most pre...
GEORGES BERNANOS

It's the first time there will be Asian Excellence Awards handed out for performances on TV, movies ...
BILL GEORGES

I have plumbed the depth of human cowardice and I realized that there is only one way to be right, a...
GEORGES BIDAULT

Oh to be seventy again.
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

The most dangerous thing about student riots is that adults take them seriously.
GEORGES POMPIDOU

The most dangerous of our calculations are those we call illusions.
GEORGES BERNANOS

Hope is a risk that must be run
GEORGES BERNANOS

To define a thing is to substitute the definition for the thing itself.
GEORGES BRAQUE

There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.
GEORGES BRAQUE

Truth exists; only lies are invented.
GEORGES BRAQUE

Art is made to disturb. Science reassures.
GEORGES BRAQUE

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.
GEORGES BRAQUE

Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry
GEORGES BRAQUE

Our offense is going to be much slower than we predicted.
SEAN GEORGES

I saw Mussolini tirelessly contemplate a parade of thousands of young men.
GEORGES SIMENON

The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong.
GEORGES BIDAULT

If we had not been dealing with the devil in person, we could have saved Algeria.
GEORGES BIDAULT

To err is human, to persist in error is diabolical.
GEORGES CANGUILHEM

The place smelled of fairgrounds, of lazy crowds, of nights when you stayed out because you couldn't...
GEORGES SIMENON

Is not piety itself passion, but passion ennobled, sanctified? The whole of the Catholic liturgy, wi...
GEORGES RODENBACH

He mostly preached in the evening, when the college
church was already shrouded in shadow. And...
GEORGES RODENBACH

Love is rebellious bird that nobody can tame, and it's all in vain to call it if it chooses to refus...
GEORGES BIZET

Religion is a means of exploitation employed by the strong against the weak; religion is a cloak of ...
GEORGES BIZET

It is evident that one cannot say anything demonstrable about the problem before having resolved the...
GEORGES CUVIER

Subjective artists are one-eyed, but objective artists are blind.
GEORGES ROUAULT

Attack is only one half of the art of boxing.
GEORGES CARPENTIER

sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.
GEORGES DUHAMEL

Parfois, tu rêves que le sommeil est une morte lente qui te gagne, une anestésie douce et terrible...
GEORGES PEREC

A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed f...
GEORGES BERNANOS

Faith is not a thing which one ''loses',' we merely cease to shape our lives by it.
GEORGES BERNANOS

It was night and I could see a large and calm lake, reflecting the moon. Black mountains rose around...
GEORGES SIMENON

It was a rough one.
SEAN GEORGES

Forse sapevano, un po' meglio degli altri, decifrare, o magari suscitare, questi segni favorevoli. L...
GEORGES PEREC

I think the overall response was deplorable in terms of the timing and there's plenty of blame go ar...
GEORGES BENJAMIN

This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to nam...
GEORGES PEREC

Uzunca bir süre kendine sığınaklar kurup yıktın: düzen ya da eylemsizlik, başıboş sürükl...
GEORGES PEREC

Kayıtsızlık dili geçersiz kılıyor,işaretleri anlaşılmaz hale getiriyor.Sabırlısın ama be...
GEORGES PEREC

Estás solo, y al estar solo, no has de mirar nunca la hora, no has de contar nunca los minutos. No ...
GEORGES PEREC

Tu n'as rien appris, sinon que la solitude n'apprend rien, que l'indifférence n'apprend rien: c'ét...
GEORGES PEREC

Tu as tout à apprendre, tout ce qui ne s'apprend pas: la solitude, l'indifférence, la patience, le...
GEORGES PEREC

Non. Tu n'es plus le maître anonyme du monde, celui sur qui l'histoire n'avait pas de prise, celui ...
GEORGES PEREC

A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he's not a man of a...
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

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.

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Georges Bataille

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

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