To the lover the loved one always appears as solitary.

The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.

Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].

Death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.

What has been forgotten is never something purely individual. Everything forgotten mingles with what has been forgotten of the prehistoric world, forms countless, uncertain, changing compounds, yielding a constant flow of new, strange products.

These are days when no one should rely unduly on his competence. Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.

All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate.