In other words, the unique value of the "authentic" work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty.

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

The distracted person, too, can form habits.

We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.

It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed.

In the convulsions of the commodity economy, we begin to recognize the monuments of the bourgeoisie as ruins even before they have crumbled.

Books, too, begin like the week – with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday.