The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.

Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed.

The distracted person, too, can form habits.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

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.

Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly. More and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange our experiences...Experience has fallen in value. And it looks as if it is continuing to fall into bottomlessness.

He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say.