All disgust is originally disgust at touching.

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.

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

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.

Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.

Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.

The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe