Statement 30

“But, in this liberation of man, which leads to a suffocating absence of limits on the surface of the globe, human nature is far from surrendering without resistance. For if it is true that his blood, bones, and arms, that the shuddering of his pleasure or still more the silence of true dread - if it is true that his senile laughter and his insipid hate are endlessly lost and rise toward a sky as beautiful as death, as pale and implausible as death, his eyes continue to fetter him tightly to vulgar things, in the midst of which necessity has determined his steps.” George Bataille, Visions of Excess, Selected Writing 1927-1939, translated by Allan Stoekl (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985) P. 83