Our Image Of Happiness Is Indissolubly Bound

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.

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.

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.

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.

Every Monument Of Civilization Is A Monument Of Barbarism