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. – Walter Benjamin
Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death. – Walter Benjamin
The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out. – Walter Benjamin
Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. – Walter Benjamin
Jones Very is gone into the multitude as solitary as Jesus. In dismissing him, I seem to have discharged an arrow into the heart of Society. Wherever that young enthusiast goes, he will astonish and disconcert men by dividing for them the cloud that covers the gulf in man. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838 journal, about Jones Very