"Sophisticated people
can hardly understand
how vague experience is
at bottom, and how truly
that vagueness suppports
whatever clearness is
afterwards attained."

Santayana, The Life of
Reason, 1905-1906

*

"Self-love seems so
often unrequited."

Anthony Powell
The Acceptance World, 1955

*

"...to grasp
topicality as the
reverse of the eternal
in history and to
make an impression
of this, the side of
the medallion hidden
from view."

Walter Benjamin, letters