A very great Iliad… concerns the creation of a nation.
Category Archive: 1903
Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey.
It is the creator of fiction’s point of view; it is the character who interests him. Sometimes he wants to convince the reader that the story he is telling is as interesting as universal history.
The culture industry not so much adapts to the reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them.
Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.
The simple truth of our finiteness is that we could, by whatever means, go on interminably only at the price of either losing the past and, therewith, our identity, or living only in the past and therefore without a real present. We cannot seriously wish either and thus not a physical enduring at that price.
Only a humanity to whom death has become as indifferent as its members, that has itself died, can inflict it administratively on innumerable people.
He who has laughter on his side has no need of proof.
I have a rendezvous with life.
Work while you work, play while you play – this is a basic rule of repressive self-discipline.