All The Decisive Blows Are Struck Left-handed.

He Who Asks Fortune-tellers The Future Unwittingly Forfeits An Inner Intimation Of Coming Events That Is A Thousand Times More Exact Than Anything They May Say. He Is Impelled By Inertia, Rather Than Curiosity, And Nothing Is More Unlike The Submissive Apathy With Which He Hears His Fate Revealed Than The Alert Dexterity With Which The Man Of Courage Lays Hands On The Future.

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.

Language Has Unmistakably Made Plain That Memory Is Not An Instrument For Exploring The Past But Its Theater. It Is The Medium Of Past Experience, Just As The Earth Is The Medium In Which Dead Cities Lie Buried.

Ideas Are To Objects As Constellations Are To Stars [translated From Trauerspiel, 1928].

Any Translation Which Intends To Perform A Transmitting Function Cannot Transmit Anything But Information-hence, Something Inessential. This Is The Hallmark Of Bad Translations.