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A light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve.

Roland Barthes

We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.
ROLAND BARTHES

Common Deep Intelligence Known Name Philosophy Sense War
Frontiers are physical as well as symbolic constructions.
ROLAND BARTHES

Construction Front Physical Symbolic
Why is it better to last than to burn?
ROLAND BARTHES

Better Burn Last Myself
Every exploration is an appropriation.
ROLAND BARTHES

Appropriate Exploration
To make someone wait: the constant prerogative of all power.
ROLAND BARTHES

Patience Power Wait
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

Attend People Performance Spectacle Sports Thinking
It is no longer the sexual which is indecent, it is the sentimental.
ROLAND BARTHES

Emotional Sexuality
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.
ROLAND BARTHES

Dinner Environment Formal Moral Society Talk Wine
Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula.
ROLAND BARTHES

Bliss Image Knowledge Mythology World
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

Arrival Lose Myself Time
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?
ROLAND BARTHES

Better Burn Evaluation Kind Love
A picture is never anything but its own plural description.
ROLAND BARTHES

Description Photograph Plural
Ultimately, Photography is subversive, not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks.
ROLAND BARTHES

Fear Photography Scare Thinking
Architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.
ROLAND BARTHES

Architecture Convenience Dreams Function Instrument
Don’t say mourning. It’s too psychoanalytic. I’m not mourning. I’m suffering.
ROLAND BARTHES

Mourning Myself Suffering
Thus every writer’s motto reads: mad I cannot be, sane I do not deign to be, neurotic I am.
ROLAND BARTHES

Design Myself Reading Writing
Isn’t the most sensitive point of this mourning the fact that I must lose a language – the amorous language? No more ‘I love you’s.
ROLAND BARTHES

I Love You Language Lose Myself Point
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!
ROLAND BARTHES

Children Poem Poetry Reproduction Subject
What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.
ROLAND BARTHES

Existence Oneself Repeat Reproduction
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.
ROLAND BARTHES

Known Law Limitation Photography Possible
I love you is unsubtle. It removes explanations, facilities, degrees, scruples.
ROLAND BARTHES

I Love You Myself Removal
The photographic image is a message without a code.
ROLAND BARTHES

Code Image Message Photography
The politician being interviewed clearly takes a great deal of trouble to imagine an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized!
ROLAND BARTHES

Himself Imagination Policy Politics Trouble
Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.
ROLAND BARTHES

Classification Forget Language Oppression Power Speech
To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love (the other), to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not–this is the beginning of writing.
ROLAND BARTHES

Beginning Known Love Myself Writing
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

Essence Hell Heroes High Place
We can never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, every origin. Writing is that neuter, that composite, that obliquity into which our subject flees, the black-and-white where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.
ROLAND BARTHES

Body Destruction Goodness Identity Known Subject Voice Writing

A light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve.

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A light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve.

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