The killing of a criminal can be moral-but never its legitimation.

Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.

The good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment he opens his mouth.

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.

Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.

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

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.