It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.

The work of memory collapses time.

Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.

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

Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.

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

The crowd is the veil through which the familiar city beckons to the flâneur as phantasmagoria-now a landscape, now a room.