Barthes Quotes

“But I never looked like that!’ - How do you know? What is the ‘you’ you might or might not look like? Where do you find it - by which morphological or expressive calibration? Where is your authentic body? You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image; you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens (I am interested in seeing my eyes only when they look at you): even and especially for your own body, you are condemned to the repertoire of its images.”

“What right does my present have to speak of my past? Has my present some advantage over my past? What "grace" might have enlightened me? except that of passing time, or of a good cause, encountered on my way?”

“If Barthes, along with Bachelard, is one of those who have done most to enrich criticism during the last thirty years, it is not as a theoretician of a still hazy semiology, but as the champion of a new pleasure in reading.”

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

“There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it.”

“What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.”

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

“Flaubert had infinite correction to perform.”

“Ultimately, what I am seeking in the photograph taken of me... is Death: Death is the eidos of that Photograph”