Secrecy is thus, so to speak, a transition stadium between being and not-being.

For the division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one-sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of the individual.

In order to accommodate to change and to the contrast of phenomena, the intellect does not require any shocks and inner upheavals; it is only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind could accommodate to the metropolitan rhythm of events.

Judging from the ugly and repugnant things that are sometimes in vogue, it would seem as though fashion were desirous of exhibiting its power by getting us to adopt the most atrocious things for its sake alone.

Fashion is the playing area for individuals that lack interior autonomy and need more support points, but who nonetheless feel the need to stand out, to be paid attention to and be considered apart from the rest Fashion elevates the insignificant by making it in the representative of a totality, the particular incarnation of a common spirit. Its function is to make possible the kind of social obedience which is at the same time individual differentiation It is the mixing of submission and the feeling of domination that is in action here.

For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation; it is a specific form of interaction.

Modern culture is constantly growing more objective. Its tissues grow more and more out of impersonal energies, and absorb less and less the subjective entirety of the individual.