Literature tells very little to those who understand it.

Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas.

He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.

Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.

Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.

Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].

Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance - nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city - as one loses oneself in a forest - that calls for a quite different schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest.