168 Quotes by Georges Bataille

By the care she lavishes on her toilet, by the concern she has for her beauty set off by her adornment, a woman regards herself as an object always trying to attract men’s attention.

What seems to be unspeakable weakness can sometimes be just distaste for the generally accepted morality.

One can always save one’s own soul. – Lazare whispered. She uttered the sentence without moving, without even looking up. She gave me the feeling of unshakable conviction.

One day or another, it is true, dust, supposing it persists, will probably begin to gain the upper hand over domestics, invading the immense ruins of abandoned buildings, deserted dockyards; and, at that distant epoch, nothing will remain to ward off night-terrors, for lack of which we have become such great book-keepers...

The warrior’s nobility is like a prostitute’s smile, the truth of which is self-interest.

I imagine myself covered with blood, broken but transfigured and in agreement with the world, both as prey and as a jaw of time, which ceaselessly kills and is ceaselessly killed.

Nothing radically changes when instead of human satisfaction, we think of the satisfaction of some heavenly being! God’s person displaces the problem and does not abolish it.

How cruel my suffering is, – no one is more talkative than I am!

Observing her, I saw that she was made up, that she was in an evening gown, that mourning indecently emphasized her beauty.