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.

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

The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.

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

To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.

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

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.