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.

Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

These are days when no one should rely unduly on his competence. Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.

The fairy tale, which to this day is the first tutor of children because it was once the first tutor of mankind, secretly lives on in the story. The first true storyteller is, and will continue to be, the teller of fairy tales. Whenever good counsel was at a premium, the fairy tale had it, and where the need was greatest, its aid was nearest. This need was created by myth. The fairy tale tells us of the earliest arrangements that mankind made to shake off the nightmare which myth had placed upon its chest.

For what is the program of the bourgeois parties? A bad poem on springtime, filled to bursting with metaphors.

[Photography] has become more and more subtle, more and more modern, and the result is that it is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish heap without transfiguring it. Not to mention a river dam or electric cable factory: in front of these, photography can now only say, How beautiful!

Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.