All Great Works Of Literature Either Dissolve

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.

I Came Into The World Under The Sign Of Saturn -- The Star Of The Slowest Revolution, The Planet Of Detours And Delays.

We Collect Books In The Belief That We Are Preserving Them When In Fact It Is The Books That Preserve Their Collector.

As Long As There Is Still One Beggar Around, There Will Still Be Myth.

All Religions Have Honored The Beggar. For He Proves That In A Matter At The Same Time As Prosaic And Holy, Banal And Regenerative As The Giving Of Alms, Intellect And Morality, Consistency And Principles Are Miserably Inadequate.