“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.)”

Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.

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?

It is no longer the sexual which is indecent, it is the sentimental.

I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.

What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.

Every photograph is a certificate of presence.

The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

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.

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.

The new is not a fashion, it is a value.

Isn’t desire always the same, whether the object is present or absent? Isn’t the object always absent? -This isn’t the same languor: there are two words: Pothos, desire for the absent being, and Himéros, the more burning desire for the present being.

To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished.

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.

Ultimately, Photography is subversive, not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks.

Where you are tender, you speak your plural.

Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse?

All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.

The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.

A brave man acknowledges the strength of others.

The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.

God’s grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior.

Those who best know human nature will acknowledge most fully what a strength light hearted nonsense give to a hard working man

I abominate a humble man, but yet I love to perceive that a man acknowledges the superiority of my sex, and youth and all that kind of thing. . .

There is very little distance between being a fool and being wise; they are extremely close. When we are really, truly fools, when we actually acknowledge our foolishness, then we are way ahead. We are not even in the process of becoming wise – we are already wise.