It would be better to characterize the community of genuine collectors as those who believe in chance, are worshippers of chance. Not only because they each know that they owe the best of their possessions to chance, but also because they themselves pursue the traces of chance in their riches, for they are physiognomists, who believe that everything that befalls their items, no matter how illogical, wayward or unnoticed, leaves its traces. (Location 364)
(And today the book is already, as the present mode of scholarly production demonstrates, an outdated mediation between two different filing systems. (Location 391)
And it tells the story of an extraordinary writing project in which aestheticism and pragmatism are held in balance. (Location 430)
And of course he knew the meaning of the concept “verzetteln” prevalent in library science or lexicography: “to excerpt,” “to (Location 442)
disperse things that belong together into individual slips or into the form of a card index. (Location 443)
Slips or their stronger sisters, index cards—of which the Journal for Organisation declared in 1929, “cards can do everything”—stand out because of their flexibility, and thus they represent modernity. (Location 447)
Its most significant form of appearance is banality (Location 485)
Note: misread as “the most significant form”
There is knowledge that determines action. It is, however, not determining as a “motive,” but rather due to the force of its linguistic structure. (Location 487)
