The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are engaged in the same battle. Their blood flows from similar wounds. But the first one gasps and the other one gives.
Georges BatailleRead
Only literature could reveal the process of breaking the law - without which the law would have no end - independently of the necessity to create order.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Literature exposes the complexities of law, revealing essential truths about human nature beyond mere order.
Georges Bataille's quote emphasizes the unique role of literature in exploring the nuances and contradictions surrounding law and order. He suggests that without literature to articulate these themes, our understanding of legality would be limited, ultimately implying that chaos and the law coexist and that literature serves as a medium to navigate and comprehend this dynamic relationship.
Themes
LiteratureLawOrderChaosHuman Nature
In practice
Example use cases
In a literary analysis class discussing the relationship between law and morality.
More from Georges Bataille
All quotes βA judgment about life has no meaning except the truth of the one who speaks last, and the mind is at ease only at the moment when everyone is shouting at once and no one can hear a thing.
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I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.
Georges BatailleRead
What does physical eroticism signify if not a violation of the very being of its practitioners? β A violation bordering on death, bordering on murder?
Georges BatailleRead
It is clear that the world is purely parodic, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form.
Georges BatailleRead
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 BatailleRead
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A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes anothers.
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I think it's too easy to recount your unhappy memories when you write about yourself. You bask in your own innocence. You revere your grief. You arrange your angers at their most becoming angles.
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There is no such thing as chance; and what seem to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.
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You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing.
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At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.
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