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
We want to decipher skies and paintings, go behind these starry backgrounds or these painted canvases and, like kids trying to find a gap in a fence, try to look through the cracks in the world.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote encourages curiosity and the pursuit of deeper understanding beyond surface appearances.
Georges Bataille's quote metaphorically expresses the human desire to explore and comprehend the complexities of the world around us. By likening our pursuit of knowledge to children peering through cracks in a fence, it emphasizes the innate curiosity that drives us to look beyond the obvious and seek deeper truths behind the façade of reality, whether in nature or art.
Themes
CuriosityUnderstandingExplorationKnowledgeArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about art appreciation, this quote can highlight the importance of deeper observation.
More from Georges Bataille
All quotes →A 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.
Georges BatailleRead
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? – 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
Similar quotes
The soul in man is greater than his fate.
Sri AurobindoRead
Do you feel loved by God because you believe he makes much of you, or because you believe he frees you and empowers you to enjoy making much of him?
John PiperRead
So far it has been assumed that the only pregnancies which are aborted are accidental ones and the only foetuses destroyed those whose mothers could not bear the thought of their becoming children. In a just world this would be the case, but the world is far from just. Too many women are forced to abort by poverty, by their menfolk, by their parents. Poverty has many faces; it may be the poverty of the young, the unmarried, the student, the unemployed, the female or a combination of these.
Germaine GreerRead
Thank God! we are in the full enjoyment of all these privileges. But can we be taught to prize them too much? or how can we prize them equal to their value, if we do not know their intrinsic worth, and that they are not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature?
Benjamin FranklinRead
What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.
Rabindranath TagoreRead
The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home. He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for everyone, regardless of color and race.
Medgar EversRead