Only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope.

We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.

Language has unmistakably made plain that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried.

Not to find one’s way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one’s way in a city, as one loses one’s way in a forest, requires some schooling.

As long as there is still one beggar around, there will still be myth.

Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.

Every monument of civilization is a monument of barbarism