Only a humanity to whom death has become as indifferent as its members, that has itself died, can inflict it administratively on innumerable people.

The sublime is only a step removed from the ridiculous.

The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass available.

Art is the social antithesis of society, not directly deducible from it.

Kitsch parodies catharsis...It is in vain to try to draw the boundaries abstractly between aesthetic fiction and kitsch's emotional plunder. It is a poison admixed to all art; excising it is today one of art's despairing efforts.

In his state of complete powerlessness the individual perceives the time he has left to live as a brief reprieve.

The inadequacy of the purely purpose-oriented form is revealed for what it is-a monotonous, impoverished boring practicality.