Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.
I came into the world under the sign of Saturn – the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.
The work of memory collapses time.
It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.
During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well.
In other words, the unique value of the “authentic” work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty.
Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed.
Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.
Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.
To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.
To the lover the loved one always appears as solitary.
The good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment he opens his mouth.
Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption.
Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.
Only for the sake of the hopeless have we been given hope.
In the convulsions of the commodity economy, we begin to recognize the monuments of the bourgeoisie as ruins even before they have crumbled.
Press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the...
Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.
These are days when no one should rely unduly on his competence. Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.
Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help...
Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.