There was the pedestrian who wedged himself into the crowd, but there was also the flneur who demanded elbow room and was unwilling to forego the life of the gentleman of leisure. His leisurely appearance as a personality is his protest against the division of labour which makes people into specialists. it was also his protest against their industriousness. Around 1840 it was briefly fashionable to take turtles for a walk in the arcades. the flneurs liked to have the turtles set the pace for them.

The illiterate of the future will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph.

We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.

Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information-hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.

The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.

To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.

For what is the program of the bourgeois parties? A bad poem on springtime, filled to bursting with metaphors.