The Distracted Person, Too, Can Form Habits.

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.

How Many Cities Have Revealed Themselves To Me In The Marches I Undertook In The Pursuit Of Books!

Not To Find One’s Way Around A City Does Not Mean Much. But To Lose One’s Way In A City, As One Loses One’s Way In A Forest, Requires Some Schooling.

Genuine Polemics Approach A Book As Lovingly As A Cannibal Spices A Baby.

In The Fields With Which We Are Concerned, Knowledge Comes Only In Flashes. The Text Is The Thunder Rolling Long Afterward.