A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see.
ROLAND BARTHESThe lover who does not forget sometimes dies from excess, fatigue, and the strain of memory (like Werther).
More Roland Barthes Quotes
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Every new Fashion is a refusal to inherit, a subversion against the oppression of the preceding Fashion; Fashion experiences itself as a Right, the natural right of the present over the past.
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The photographer, like an acrobat, must defy the laws of probability or even of possibility; at the limit, he must defy those of the interesting: the photograph becomes surprising when we do not know why it has been taken.
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I cannot classify the other, for the other is, precisely, Unique, the singular Image which has miraculously come to correspond to the speciality of my desire. The other is the figure of my truth, and cannot be imprisoned in any stereotype (which is the truth of others).
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Every exploration is an appropriation.
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Those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere.
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Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.
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How does meaning get into the image? Where does it end? And if it ends, what is there beyond?
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There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it.
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Frontiers are physical as well as symbolic constructions.
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Who speaks is not who writes, and who writes is not who is.
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Why is it better to last than to burn?
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Someone tells me: this kind of love is not viable. But how can you evaluate viability? Why is the viable a Good Thing? Why is it better to last than to burn?
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I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.
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Language is never innocent.
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The photographic image is a message without a code.
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What love lays bare in me is energy.
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The book creates meaning, the meaning creates life.
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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.)
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The haiku reproduces the designating gesture of the child pointing at whatever it is (the haiku shows no partiality for the subject), merely saying: that!
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The realists do not take the photograph for a ‘copy’ of reality, but for an emanation of past reality, a magic, not an art.
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All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.
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Wine is a part of society because it provides a basis not only for a morality but also for an environment; it is an ornament in the slightest ceremonials of French daily life, from the snack to the feast, from the conversation at the local cafT to the speech at a formal dinner.
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I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.
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When we look at a photograph of ourselves or of others, we are really looking at the return of the dead.
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We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.
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A paradox: the same century invented history and photography. But history is a memory fabricated according to positive formulas, a pure intellectual discourse which abolishes mythic time; and the photograph is a certain but fugitive testimony.
ROLAND BARTHES