Theory of Religion Quotes

“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, Theory of Religion

“There is no enterprise in this world which, however great it may be, has any end other than a definitive loss in a futile instant. Just as the world of things is nothing in the superfluous universe in which it dissolves, so the mass of efforts is nothing in the face of the futility of a single instant. It is the free instant and yet submissive, furtively engaged in petty operations out of fear of letting time be lost, that justifies the pejorative value of the word futile.
This introduces, as a foundation of clear self-consciousness, the consideration of objects dissolved and destroyed in the intimate instant. It is a return to the situation of the animal that eats another; it is the negation of the difference between the object and myself, or the general destruction of objects as such in the field of consciousness. Insofar as I destroy it in the field of my clear consciousness, this table ceases to form a distinct and opaque screen between the world and me. But this table could not be destroyed in the field of my consciousness if I did not carry my destruction through in the real order. The real reduction of the reduction of the real order introduces into the economic order a fundamental inversion. If the movement of the economy is to be preserved, the point must be determined at which surplus production will flow out like a river. It is a matter of consuming—or of destroying—infinitely the objects produced. This could also be done without the least consciousness. But it is insofar as clear consciousness triumphs that the objects effectively destroyed will not destroy men themselves. The destruction of the subject as an individual is in fact implied in the destruction of the object as such, but war is not its inevitable form; it is not, at any rate, its conscious form (at least if self-consciousness is to be, in the general sense, human).”
― Georges Bataille, Theory of Religion

“A ligação estreita entre a morte e a tristeza é uma opinião ingênua. As lágrimas dos vivos, em resposta à sua chegada, têm um sentido nada oposto à alegria. Longe de serem dolorosas, as lágrimas são a expressão de uma consciência aguda da vida em comum captada na sua intimidade. É certo que é no momento em que a ausência segue repentinamente a presença que essa consciência é mais aguda, como na morte ou na simples separação, e nesse caso, o consolo (no sentido profundo que os místicos davam aos «consolos») está amargamente ligado ao facto de não poder durar, mas é precisamente o desaparecimento da duração, e com ela os comportamentos neutros que a acompanham, que destapa um fundo das coisas cujo ofuscamento cega (por outras palavras, é evidente que a necessidade da duração nos rouba a vida, e que só, em principio, a impossibilidade da duração nos liberta). Noutros casos as lágrimas respondem ao triunfo inesperado, à sorte que nos faz exultar, mas sempre de modo insensato, muito além da preocupação com o tempo futuro.”
― Georges Bataille, Theory of Religion

“In this gathering place, where violence is rife, at the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes that there is no longer any room for him.”
― Georges Bataille, Theory of Religion