Bourgeois existence is the regime of private affairs . . . and the family is the rotten, dismal edifice in whose closets and crannies the most ignominious instincts are deposited. Mundane life proclaims the total subjugation of eroticism to privacy.

Kitsch offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, wihtout sublimation.

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

Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.

All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.

The distracted person, too, can form habits.

Bourgeois existence is the regime of private affairs . . . and the family is the rotten, dismal edifice in whose closets and crannies the most ignominious instincts are deposited. Mundane life proclaims the total subjugation of eroticism to privacy.