The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.

The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.

To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.

Every monument of civilization is a monument of barbarism

There was the pedestrian who wedged himself into the crowd, but there was also the flneur who demanded elbow room and was unwilling to forego the life of the gentleman of leisure. His leisurely appearance as a personality is his protest against the division of labour which makes people into specialists. it was also his protest against their industriousness. Around 1840 it was briefly fashionable to take turtles for a walk in the arcades. the flneurs liked to have the turtles set the pace for them.

The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe

This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceived a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistably propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. The storm is what we call progress.