The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.

Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably.

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

The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.

The good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment he opens his mouth.

I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order.

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