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"We are guilty of an anachronism if we imagine the medieval student regarded books as the expression of another man's personality and opinion. He looked upon them as part of that great and total body of knowledge, property of ancient sages. Whatever he read in an old book he would take to be not somebody's assertion but a small piece of knowledge acquired by someone long ago from someone else still more ancient."

“wherever possible, and often in disregard of its theoretic or moral commitments, the knowledge draws on the power. Thinking on the period of haute vulgarisation which preceded the French Revolution, one wonders whether such periods—a society making total inventory of its skills—are logical forerunners to political and social crisis. Do societies harvest before a storm?”

“After the novel, what then? I have tried to suggest elsewhere that in an era of electronic and primarily visual means of statement, and among the new collective societies now emerging, drama—and specially the kind of drama open to audience participation and critique—has an immense future.” Written in 1965.

"Van Groningen's analysis of the reasons for the Greek obsession with the past, as scientific and as psychological security, helps to explain the natural literary bias of all humanist ages in favour of ruins. For nowhere does the past speak so eloquently to the solitary musings of the scholar as from the midst of ruins. "

"but if we discard Berkeley's theory of vision, according to which we "see" a flat field but "construct" a tactile space, we can perhaps rid art history of its obsession with space and bring other achievements into focus" everything is so connected, I'd just read the first page of Berkeley and then came back to this??? On a book that hadn’t mentioned him before?? Angels everywhere omg peace and love

"This externalization of our senses creates what de Chardin calls the "noosphere" or a technological brain for the world. Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as in an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside."

"It is a matter of "rite words in rote order," as Joyce put it. But once more any Western child today grows up in this kind of magical repetitive world as he hears advertisements on radio and TV."

“This world will end neither with a bang nor a whimper, but with a headline, a slogan, a pulp novel larger than the cedars of Lebanon. In how much of what is now pouring forth do words become word—and where is the silence needed if we are to hear that metamorphosis?”

“This good angel seemed mildly to say — Read, Pierre, though by reading thou may’st entangle thyself, yet may’st thou thereby disentangle others. Read, and feel that best blessedness which, with the sense of all duties discharged, holds happiness indifferent.”

“The face haunted him as some imploring, and beauteous, impassioned, ideal Madonna’s haunts the morbidly longing and enthusiastic, but ever-baffled artist.” Has Donna Tartt ever mentioned this book as inspiration? Important question. Surely... right?

“after Spinoza, philosophers know that they are using language to clarify language, like cutters using diamonds to shape other diamonds. Language is seen no longer as a road to demonstrable truth, but as a spiral or gallery of mirrors bringing the intellect back to its point of departure.”

“He who has read Kafka’s Metamorphosis and can look into his mirror unflinching may technically be able to read print, but is illiterate in the only sense that matters.”

“As never before, the student and the person interested in the current of literature reads reviews and critiques of books rather than the books themselves, or before he has made the effort of personal judgment.” Written decadesss ago mind you

“We come after. We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning. To say that he has read them without understanding or that his ear is gross, is cant.”

"As soon as his passport or identity card has been checked, the passenger for the next flight, freed from the weight of his luggage and everyday responsibilities, rushes into the 'duty-free' space; not so much, perhaps, in order to buy at the best prices as to experience the reality of his momentary availability, his unchallengeable position as a passenger in the process of departing."

"legends of a contest for the throne of Egypt may contain a reminiscence of real dynastical struggles (...) Set being the late king’s brother, and Horus the late king’s son; though Horus indeed united both claims to the crown, being the son of the king’s sister as well as of the king. A similar attempt to shift the line of succession seems to have given rise to similar contests at Rome" MANY such cases

"COLUMBUS: Fools! I strongly doubt whether the dawn will bring you the promised land. And if, by that chance which no one calls to mind in the event of success, I should discover this world whose whereabouts I do not know, nor even whether it exists, all would be finished for me, the adventure and its adorable anguish."

"THE KING [warmly]: Hail, Columbus! You who are sound in body and mind; what an ailing world it is. Find a new world. I reign over a neurasthenic kingdom. Happy are you to possess the sea, mighty misanthrope! As for me...
COLUMBUS: Are you troubled?
THE KING: I am moved. You have a ship. I have only a throne."

"Sphere, ideal volume, shape of my dream, one must be like a child to understand you."

“these products of the bees do not constitute wealth until man puts his hands on them. Money is not edible or habitable. It is worthless if the other fellow refuses to take it. The m.o reality behind the symbol is found in human agreement. The value behind the symbol is doctrinal. Fido does not discriminate between the different orders of abstractions. If we copy him, we worship the symbol alone.”

“We illustrate this all the time by simple examples, such as our sleeping, or eating, any activities, or pain, pleasure, or immediate feelings, ‘emotions’., which are not words. If words are not translated into the first order unspeakable effects, with the result that we do not do something, or do not feel something, or do not learn or remember something., such words take no effect and become useless noises.”

“Then we explain repeatedly and at length, emphasizing the important principle of evaluation, that to live we must deal with the objective level; yet this level cannot be reached by words alone. (…) Once this is established, we stress the fact that we must handle, look, and listen., never speak, but remain silent, outwardly as well as inwardly, in order to find ourselves on the objective level.”

“In one word," Father concluded, "we wish to create man a second time—in the shape and semblance of a tailor's dummy.”

“A different actor for every gesture. For each action, each word, we shall call to life a different human being. Such is our whim, and the world will be run according to our pleasure. The Demiurge was in love with consummate, superb, and complicated materials; we shall give priority to trash. We are simply entranced and enchanted by the cheapness, shabbiness, and inferiority of material.”

“As the two mortals re-entered the prison of flesh, from which their spirit had momentarily been delivered by some priceless sleep, they felt like those who wake after a night of brilliant dreams, the memory of which still lingers in their soul, though their body retains no consciousness of them, and human language is unable to give utterance to them.”

“Man never pauses; he goes his round, he vegetates until the appointed day when his Axe falls. If this wave force, this pressure of bitter waters prevents all progress, no doubt it also warns of death. Spirits prepared by faith among the higher souls of earth can alone perceive the mystic ladder of Jacob.”

“the eagle swoops where the carrion lies, but the dove seeks the mountain spring beneath the peaceful greenery of the glades. The eagle soars to heaven, the dove descends from it. Cease to venture into regions where thou canst find no spring of waters, no umbrageous shade.”

“Then it was that he foresaw the crumbling of the worlds and their destruction if God should withdraw the Breath of His Word. He searched the Apocalypse for the traces of that Word. You thought him mad. Understand him better! He was seeking pardon for the work of his genius.”

“Counting up his worlds, like grape-seeds scattered through ether, he had explained their coherence by the laws of planetary and molecular attraction. You bowed before that man of science—well! I tell you that he died in despair.”

“How do you know that the stones themselves do not deny the existence of man, though man makes use of them to build his houses?”