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Similarly, konwledge of Greek might have withered away once again in the West. Instead it was the familiar scribal phrase: "Graeca sunt ergo non legenda" that disappeared from Western books, never to reappear. For Greek type founts could be cut, Greek grammars as well as "standard editions" of Greek texts could be issued. The duplicative powers of print fixed whatever was known in a more permanent mold, making possible the progressive recovery of arcane letters and ancient languages along with the systematic development of historical scholarhsip and its auxiliary sciences.

-- E. Eisenstein, "Clio and Chronos"

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All views of historical change are conditioned by how events have been recorded, stored, retrieved, and transmitted.

-- Eisenstein, "Clio and Chronos"

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Time as right and wrong time has the character of significance, the character that characterizes the world as world in general. It is for this reason that we call the time with which we reckon, which we leave for ourselves, world-time. This does not mean that the time we read from the clock is something extant like intraworldly things. We know, of course, that the world is not an extant entity, not nature, but that which first makes possible the uncoveredness of nature. It is therefore also inappropriate, as frequently happens, to call this time nature-time or natural time. There is no nature-time, since all time belongs essentially to the Dasein. But there is indeed a world-time.

-- Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology

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Accordingly, we should say that there are no new media, but one new medium, named the computer, the newness of which (according to Turing's proof) is that it can be all machines, and thus all media. -- Kittler, "What's New About the New Media?"

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"On n'a point besoin de faire dependre l'analyse mathématique des controverses métaphysiques."

√ (-1) is the phallus.

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Lawrence Alma-Tadema

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“Comets behave like cats,” Dr. Masi said. “They have a tail, and they do exactly what they want.”

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All philosophy, I told her, is based on two things only: curiosity and poor eyesight [...]. The trouble is, we want to know more than we can see. Again, if we could really see things as they are, we would really know something, but we see things other than as they are.

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Was habe ich mit Juden gemeinsam? Ich habe kaum etwas mit mir gemeinsam -- Kafka

"What do I have in common with Jews? I hardly have anything in common with myself"

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An early letter to Max Brod sheds a very clear light on the genesis of this unusual aptitude. It comes from the year 1904, when Kafka was twenty-one years old; I call it the Mole Letter and quote from it as much as seems necessary for an understanding of Kafka's transformation into something small. [...] "While I was out on a walk my dog came upon a mole that was trying to cross the road. He kept leaping at him and wouldn't leave him alone, for he is a young dog, and timid. At first I was amused and liked especially the mole's excitement as he looked for a hole in the hard surface of the road, altogether desperately and ineffectually. But then suddenly, when the dog struck him once more with an outstretched paw, he shrieked Ks, kss, just like that. And then I thought—no, I did not think anything. I was simply in a state of delusion, because on that day my head was hanging so heavily that in the evening I noticed with amazement that my chin had grown into my chest."

The dog, let us note, the dog hunting the mole, was Kafka's dog; he was its master. For the mole who, scared to death, looks for a hole in the hard road, a hole in which to hide—he himself does not exist; the animal is afraid only of the dog, its senses are open only for the latter. But he, Kafka, so exalted above them, by his upright stance, his height, and his ownership of the dog, which could never threaten him, simply laughs at the desperate and ineffectual movements of the mole. The mole does not realize that it could turn to him for help; it has not learned to pray, and it is capable of nothing but its small screams. They are the only sounds that touch the god, for here he is the god, the supreme being, the zenith of power, and in this case God is even present. The mole screams Ks, kss, and the onlooker, hearing this scream, transforms himself into the mole. Without having to fear his dog, which is his slave, he feels what it is to be a mole.

-- Canetti, Kafka's Other Trial

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Das Tier entwendet dem Herrn die Peitsche und peitscht sich selbst, um Herr zu werden, und weiß nicht, dass das nur eine Phantasie ist, erzeugt durch einen neuen Knoten im Peitschenriemen des Herrn.

-- Kafka

The beast takes the whip from the master and whips itself, in order to become master, and doesn't know that this is only a fantasy, created through a new knot in the leather of the master's whip.

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The work pattern was one of alternate bouts of intense labour and of idleness, wherever men were in control of their own working lives. (The pattern persists among some self-employed -- artists, writers, small farmers, and perhaps also with students -- today, and provokes the question whether it is not a 'natural' human work-rhythm."

-- E. P. Thompson, "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism"

In which I learn of "St. Monday," whose rites may not be neglected!

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Adam Magyar, Stainless (excerpt, Grand Central)

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Die Vergangenheit ist für Historiker vergangen und daher auch nicht mehr erfahrbar. Erfahrbar ist nur, was gegenwärtig ist und das sind die Quellen. - Johannes Süßmann

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Si fingat, peccat in historiam; si non fingat, peccat in poesin. -- Alsted

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There are some writers you shouldn't challenge if you can help it – as Flannery O'Connor remarked about Faulkner's superior power, "nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down."

Probably the only thing I've ever read from Adam Mars-Jones that didn't annoy me.

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Some filmmakers make images that don’t sell anything. 

-- Serge Daney