Roland Barthes Quotes - Page 5

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• Literature is that which he can not read without pain, without choking on truth.

  Roland Barthes

  Pain, Literature, Choke

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• One must turn the tongue seven times in the mouth before speaking.

  Roland Barthes

  Mouths, Tongue, Seven

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• Frontiers are physical as well as symbolic constructions

  Roland Barthes

  Construction, Wells, Symbolic

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• This endured absence is nothing more or less than forgetfulness. I am, intermittently, unfaithful. This is the condition of my survival.

  Roland Barthes

  Survival, Unfaithful, Absence

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• Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula.

  Roland Barthes

  Knowledge, World, Mythology

  Roland Barthes (1973). “Mythologies”

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• The Ventoux is a god of Evil, to which sacrifices must be made. It never forgives weakness and extracts an unfair tribute of suffering.

  Roland Barthes

  Sacrifice, Evil, Forgiving

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• One day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jerome, taken in 1852. And I realized then, with an amazement I have not been able to lessen since: ‘I am looking at eyes that looked at the Emperor.’ Sometimes I would mention this amazement, but since no one seemed to share it, nor even to understand it (life consists of these little touches of solitude), I forgot about it.

  Roland Barthes

  Brother, Taken, Eye

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• Literature is without proofs. By which it must be understood that it cannot prove, not only what it says, but even that it is worth the trouble of saying it.

  Roland Barthes

  Understanding, Literature, Trouble

  Roland Barthes, Richard Howard (1989). “Bruissement de la Langue”, p.372, Univ of California Press

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• Thus every writer's motto reads: mad I cannot be, sane I do not deign to be, neurotic I am.

  Roland Barthes

  Writing, Mad, Motto

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• All of a sudden it didn't bother me not being modern.

  Roland Barthes

  Modern, Bother

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• Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not, which forbids talking about things

  Roland Barthes

  Talking, Law, World

  Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag (1983). “Barthes: Selected Writings”

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• For me the noise of Time is not sad: I love bells, clocks, watches — and I recall that at first photographic implements were related to techniques of cabinetmaking and the machinery of precision: cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing, and perhaps in me someone very old still hears in the photographic mechanism the living sound of the wood.

  Roland Barthes

  Technique, Cameras, Sound

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• I have tried to be as eclectic as I possibly can with my professional life, and so far it's been pretty fun.

  Roland Barthes

  Fun, Eclectic Style, Eclectic

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• L'amoureux qui n'oublie pas quelquefois meurt par exce' s, fatigue et tension de me moire (tel Werther). The lover who does not forget sometimes dies from excess, fatigue, and the strain of memory (like Werther).

  Roland Barthes

  Memories, Doe, Excess

  1977 Fragments d'un discours amoureux.

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• The Photograph is violent: not because it shows violent tings, but because on each occasion (i)it fills the sight by force(i), and because in it nothing can be refused or transformed (that we can sometimes call it mild does not contradict its violence: many say that sugar is mild, but to me sugar is violent, and I call it so).

  Roland Barthes

  Sight, Doe, Sugar

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• The art of living has no history: it does not evolve: the pleasure which vanishes vanishes for good, there is no substitute for it. Other pleasures come, which replace nothing. No progress in pleasures, nothing but mutations.

  Roland Barthes

  Art, Progress, Doe

  Roland Barthes (1994). “Roland Barthes”

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• Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is Desire: we are always being told about Desire, never about Pleasure.

  Roland Barthes

  Strong, Struggle, Joy

  Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag (1983). “Barthes: Selected Writings”

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• Literature is like phosphorus: it shines with its maximum brilliance and the moment when it attempts to die.

  Roland Barthes

  Shining, Literature, Moments

  Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag (1983). “Barthes: Selected Writings”

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• Death of the Father would deprive literature of many of its pleasures. If there is no longer a Father, why tell stories? Doesn't every narrative lead back to Oedipus? Isn't storytelling always a way of searching for one's origin, speaking one's conflicts with the Law, entering into the dialectic of tenderness and hatred?

  Roland Barthes

  Father, Oedipus, Law

  Roland Barthes (2012). “How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces”, p.190, Columbia University Press

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• I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time.

  Roland Barthes

  Games, Trying, Busy

  Roland Barthes (1990). “A lover's discourse: fragments”, Penguin Books

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• If I acknowledge my dependency, I do so because for me it is a means of signifying my demand: in the realm of love, futility is not a "weakness" or an "absurdity": it is a strong sign: the more futile, the more it signifies and the more it asserts itself as strength.)

  Roland Barthes

  Strong, Mean, Weakness

  Roland Barthes (1990). “A lover's discourse: fragments”, Penguin Books

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• Physically, the Ventoux is dreadful. Bald, it's the spirit of Dry: Its climate (it is much more an essence of climate than a geographic place) makes it a damned terrain, a testing place for heroes, something like a higher hell.

  Roland Barthes

  Hero, Essence, Climate

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• There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.

  Roland Barthes

  Sports, Wrestling, Thinking

  Roland Barthes (1973). “Mythologies”

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• Television doomed us to the Family, whose household instrument it has become-what the hearth used to be, flanked by the communal kettle.

  Roland Barthes

  Heart, Television, Used

  Roland Barthes, Richard Howard (1989). “Bruissement de la Langue”, p.346, Univ of California Press

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• Literature can no longer be either Mimesis or Mathesis but merely Semiosis, the adventure of what is impossible to language, in a word: Text (it is wrong to say that the notion of 'text' repeats the notion of 'literature': literature represents a finite world, the text figures the infinite of language).

  Roland Barthes

  Adventure, Literature, World

  Roland Barthes (1994). “Roland Barthes”

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