(p.28) [Extract from: The Origin of the Work of Art] - A piece of equipment, a pair of shoes for instance, when finished, is also self-contained like the mere thing, but it does not have the character of having taken shape by itself like the granite boulder. On the other hand, equipment displays an affinity with the art work insofar as it is something produced by the human hand. However, by its self-sufficient presence the work of art is similar rather to the mere thing which has taken shape by itself and is self-contained. Nevertheless we do not count such works...

(p.33) [Extract from: The Origin of the work of Art] - From the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the toilsome tread of the worker stares forth. In the stiffly rugged heaviness of the shoes there is the accumulated tenacity of her slow trudge through the far-spreading and ever-uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw wind. On the leather lie the dampness and richness of the soil. Under the soles slides the loneliness of the field-path as evening falls. In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift of the ripening grain...

(p.57) [Extract from: The Origin of the work of Art] - We think of creation as a bringing forth. But the making of equipment, too, is a bringing forth. Handicraft—a remarkable play of language—does not, to be sure, create works, not even when we contrast, as we must, the handmade with the factory product. But what is it that distinguishes bringing forth as creation from bringing forth in the mode of making? It is as difficult to track down the essential features of the creation of works and the making of equipment as it is easy to distinguish verbally between the...

(p.62) [Extract from: The Origin of the work of Art] - In the creation of a work [of Art], the conflict, as rift, must be set back into the earth, and the earth itself must be set forth and used as the self-closing factor. This use, however, does not use up or mis-use the earth as matter, but rather sets it free to benothing but itself. This use of the earth is a working with it that, to be sure, looks like the employment of matter in handicraft. Hence the appearance that artistic creation is also an activity of handicraft. It...

(p.83) [Extract from: The Origin of the Work of Art] - In accordance with what has so far been explained, the meaning of the noun "Ge-Stell" frame, framing, framework, used on page 62, is thus defined: the gathering of the bringing-forth, of the letting-come-forth-here into the rift-design as bounding outline (peras). The Greek sense of morphe as figure, Gestalt, is made clear by "Ge-Stell," "framing," so understood. Now the word "Ge-Stell," frame, which we used in later writings as the explicit key expression for the nature of modern technology, was indeed conceived in reference to that sense of frame (not in...

(p.109) [Extract from: What are Poets for?] - The whole objective inventory in terms of which the world appears is given over to, commended to, and thus subjected to the command of self-assertive production. Willing has in it the character of command; for purposeful self-assertion is a mode in which the attitude of the producing, and the objective character of the world, concentrate into an unconditional and therefore complete unity. In this self-concentration, the command character of the will announces itself. And through it in the course of modern metaphysics, the long-concealed nature of the long-since existing will as the Being...

(p.112) [Extract from: What are poets for? This extract in particular is discussing Rilke's poetry and emerges from a discussion on 'Americanism'] - In place of all the world-content of things that was formerly perceived and used to grant freely of itself, the object-character of technological dominion spreads itself over the earth ever more quickly, ruthlessly, and completely. Not only does it establish all things as producible in the process of production; it also delivers the products of production by means of the market. In self-assertive production, the humanness of man and the thingness of things dissolve into the calculated market...

(p.113) [Extract from: What are poets for?] - Among those beings, plants and beasts, too, none is under special protection, though they are admitted into the Open and secured in it. Man, on the other hand, as the being who wills him-self, not only enjoys no special protection from the whole of beings, but rather is unshielded (line 13). As the one who proposes and produces, he stands before the obstructed Open. He himself and his things are thereby exposed to the growing danger of turning into mere material and into a function of objectification. The design of self-assertion itself extends...

(p.115) [Extract from: What are poets for?] - But above all, technology itself prevents any experience of its nature. For while it is developing its own self to the full, it develops in the sciences a kind of knowing that is debarred from ever entering into the realm of the essential nature of technology, let alone retracing in thought that nature's origin. The essence of technology comes to the light of day only slowly. This day is the world's night, rearranged into merely technological day. This day is the shortest day. It threatens a single endless winter. Not only does protection...

(p.158) [Extract from: Building, Dwelling, Thinking ] - We are attempting to trace in thought the nature of dwelling. The next step on this path would be the question: what is the state of dwelling in our precarious age? On all sides we hear talk about the housing shortage, and with good reason. Nor is there just talk; there is action too. We try to fill the need by providing houses, by promoting the building of houses, planning the whole architectural enterprise. However hard and bitter, however hampering and threatening the lack of houses remains, the real plight of dwelling does...

(p.158) [Extract from: Building, Dwelling, Thinking ] - We are attempting to trace in thought the nature of dwelling. The next step on this path would be the question: what is the state of dwelling in our precarious age? On all sides we hear talk about the housing shortage, and with good reason. Nor is there just talk; there is action too. We try to fill the need by providing houses, by promoting the building of houses, planning the whole architectural enterprise. However hard and bitter, however hampering and threatening the lack of houses remains, the real plight of dwelling does...

(p.180) [Extract from: The Thing] - Men alone, as mortals, by dwelling attain to the world as world. Only what conjoins itself out of world becomes a thing.