High culture is nothing but a child of that European perversion called history, the obsession we have with going forward, with considering the sequence of generations a relay race in which everyone surpasses his predecessor, only to be surpassed by his successor. Without this relay race called history there would be no European art and what characterizes it: a longing for originality, a longing for change. Robespierre, Napoleon, Beethoven, Stalin, Picasso, they're all runners in the relay race, they all belong to the same stadium. |
How goodness heightens beauty! |
I find myself fascinating. |
I think I am a much better actor than I have allowed myself to be. |
Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch. |
Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries. |
Listening to a news broadcast is like smoking a cigarette and crushing the butt in the ashtray. |
Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it. |
Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory. |
Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory. |
Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight. |
No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches. |
No love survives muteness. |
Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another. |
Nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of non-thought. |