Man is the namer; by this we recognize that through him pure language speaks. All nature, insofar as it communicates itself, communicates itself in language, and so finally in man. Hence, he is the lord of nature and can give names to things. Only through the linguistic being of things can he get beyond himself and attain knowledge of them-in the name. God's creation is completed when things receive their names from man, from whom in name language alone speaks.

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

The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away. The destructive character is young and cheerful. For destroying rejuvenates, because it clears away the traces of our own age; it cheers, because everything cleared away means to the destroyer a complete reduction, indeed a rooting out, of his own condition.

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.

As Hegel put it, only when it is dark does the owl of Minerva begin its flight. Only in extinction is the collector comprehend.

Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.

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.