Paul de Man

Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts. ↗

— Paul de Man

#metaphors #more #much #tenacious #than

Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means. ↗

— Paul de Man

#curiously #describing #does #enough #language

Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament. ↗

— Paul de Man

#displaced #linguistic #name #predicament

Fashion is like the ashes left behind by the uniquely shaped flames of the fire, the trace alone revealing that a fire actually took place. ↗

— Paul de Man

#alone #ashes #behind #fashion #fire

Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being. ↗

— Paul de Man

#betrays #both #error #exists #literature

Modernity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out whatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at least a point that could be called a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure. ↗

— Paul de Man

#came #could #departure #desire #earlier

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear - and even, in certain respects, would be - the most modern of critical movements. ↗

— Paul de Man

#certain #critical #denies #even #literary

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language. ↗

— Paul de Man

#agent #both #degree #his #historian