Georges Bataille - Moment Quotes

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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
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
Concern for this or that limited good can sometimes lead to the summit... But this occurs in a roundabout way. Moral ends … are distinct from any excesses they occasion. States of glory and moments of sacredness surpass results intentionally sought.

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
[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