168 Quotes by Georges Bataille

I teach the art of turning anguish into delight.

Naturally, love's the most distant possibility.

It seems impossible, in fact, to judge the eye using any word other than seductive, since nothing is more attractive in the bodies of animals and men. But extreme seductiveness is probably at the boundary of horror.

Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit; to become delightful, happiness must be tainted with poison.

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?

The preceding criticism ... justifies the following definition of the entire human: human existence as the life of "unmotivated" celebration, celebration in all meaning of the word: laughter, dancing, orgy, the rejection of subordination, and sacrifice that scornfully puts aside any consideration of ends, property, and morality.

[Zarathustra] never abandoned the watchword of not having any end, not serving a cause, because, as he knew, causes pluck off the wings we fly with.

We did not lack modesty—on the contrary—but something urgently drove us to defy modesty together as immodestly as possible.

Literature ... is the rediscovery of childhood.