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.

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.

True translation is transparent: it does not obscure the original, does not stand in its light, but rather allows pure language, as if strengthened by its own medium, to shine even more fully on the original.

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.

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.

Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.