List of Roland Barthes Quotes

To Dope The Racer Is As Criminal, As Sacrilegious, As Trying To Imitate God; It Is Stealing From God The Privilege Of The Spark.

The Unary Photograph Has Every Reason To Be Banal, 'unity' Of Composition Being The First Rule Of Vulgar (and Notably, Of Academic) Rhetoric: 'the Subject,' Says One Handbook For Amateur Photographers, 'must Be Simple, Free Of Useless Accessories; This Is Called The Search For Unity.

Are Not Couturiers The Poets Who, From Year To Year, From Strophe To Strophe, Write The Anthem Of The Feminine Body?

Literature Can No Longer Be Either Mimesis Or Mathesis But Merely Semiosis, The Adventure Of What Is Impossible To Language, In A Word: Text (it Is Wrong To Say That The Notion Of 'text' Repeats The Notion Of 'literature': Literature Represents A Finite World, The Text Figures The Infinite Of Language).

The Petit-bourgeois Is A Man Unable To Imagine The Other. If He Comes Face To Face With Him, He Blinds Himself, Ignores And Denies Him, Or Else Transforms Him Into Himself.

For The Theatre One Needs Long Arms; It Is Better To Have Them Too Long Than Too Short. An Artiste With Short Arms Can Never, Never Make A Fine Gesture.

As A Language, Garbo's Singularity Was Of The Order Of The Concept, That Of Audrey Hepburn Is Of The Order Of The Substance; The Face Of Garbo Is An Idea, That Of Hepburn, An Event.

Fashion Postulates An Achrony, A Time Which Does Not Exist; Here The Past Is Shameful And The Present Is Constantly "eaten Up" By The Fashion Being Heralded.

Flaubert Had Infinite Correction To Perform.

Usually The Amateur Is Defined As An Immature State Of The Artist: Someone Who Cannot — Or Will Not — Achieve The Mastery Of A Profession. But In The Field Of Photographic Practice, It Is The Amateur, On The Contrary, Who Is The Assumption Of The Professional: For It Is He Who Stands Closer To The (i)noeme(i) Of Photography.

Historically And Politically, The Petit-bourgeois Is The Key To The Century. The Bourgeois And Proletariat Classes Have Become Abstractions: The Petite-bourgeoisie, In Contrast, Is Everywhere, You Can See It Everywhere, Even In The Areas Of The Bourgeois And The Proletariat, What's Left Of Them.

When We Define The Photograph As A Motionless Image, This Does Not Mean Only That The Figures It Represents Do Not Move; It Means That They Do Not (i)emerge(i), Do Not (i)leave(i): They Are Anesthetized And Fastened Down, Like Butterflies.