Georges Bataille - Mind Quotes

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The fact is, that what de Sade was trying to bring to the surface of the conscious mind was precisely the thing that revolted that mind... From the very first he set before the consciousness things which it could not tolerate.

Georges Bataille
We have in fact only two certainties in this world—that we are not everything and that we will die. To be conscious of not being everything, as one is of being mortal, is nothing. But if we are without a narcotic, an unbreathable void reveals itself. I wanted to be everything, so that falling into this void, I might summon my courage and say to myself: I am ashamed of having wanted to be everything, for I see now that it was to sleep. From that moment begins a singular experience. The mind moves in a strange world where anguish and ecstasy coexist.

Georges Bataille
Sanity is the lot of those who are most obtuse, for lucidity destroys one's equilibrium: it is unhealthy to honestly endure the labors of the mind which incessantly contradict what they have just established.

Georges Bataille
It is through an intimate cessation of all intellectual operations that the mind is laid bare. If nor, discourse maintains it in its little complacency. … The difference between inner experience and philosophy resides principally in this: that in experience, … what counts is no longer the statement of wind, but the wind.

Georges Bataille