People possess language so that they can speak of their own meritsand not least of the

unsurpassable merit of being able to talk up these merits in their own language.9people
are not concerned to draw each other's attention to states of affairs, but aim instead to
incorporate states of affairs into a glory. The different speaker-groups of history-all the
various tribes and peoples-are self-praising entities that avail themselves of their own
inimitable idiom as part of a psychosocial contest played to gain advantage for
themselves.
9language says one and the same thing over and again: that nothing better could have
happened to the speaker than, precisely, to have been who he is, to have been who he is at
this place and in this language, and to bear witness to the merit of his being in his own
skin.
9
Whoever speaks incurs debt; whoever speaks further, discourses in order to pay back
12With God self-praise is a perfume. The meaning of language is to celebrate, and any
language that might forget to celebrate would have taken leave of its senses.
17is the society whose founding conditions included dismantling as far as possible all
cultural inhibitions against the use of enhancing superlatives in a democratic self
reference. What is the USA if not the product of a Declaration of Independence-from
humility
20The Moderns no longer know of evangelists; they know only of the classics. Citing a
classic guarantees a sure, albeit modest, return; on the contrary, if, in society, you invoke
the Redeemer, your credit will shrink.
25Where legend existed, the news must come! At stake now is to swap all sacred agents
for terrestrial heroes. Jesus can only be the hero of a
novel or a participant in discourse.
26