Quote

Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.

Walter Benjamin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walter Benjamin
Age: 48 †
Born: 1892
Born: July 15
Died: 1940
Died: September 26
Art Critic
Essayist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Philosopher
Sociologist
Translator
Writer
Berlin
Germany
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin
Balancing
Extreme
Extremes
Balance
Order
Precariousness

More quotes by Walter Benjamin

Image
Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.
Walter Benjamin
Image
The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.
Walter Benjamin
Image
It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.
Walter Benjamin
Image
The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].
Walter Benjamin
Image
No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.
Walter Benjamin
Image
[Photography] has become more and more subtle, more and more modern, and the result is that it is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish heap without transfiguring it. Not to mention a river dam or electric cable factory: in front of these, photography can now only say, How beautiful!
Walter Benjamin
Image
The film is the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter plays tricks on man.
Walter Benjamin
Image
I would like to metamorphose into a mouse-mountain.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written.
Walter Benjamin
Image
You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.
Walter Benjamin
Image
The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.
Walter Benjamin
Image
He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say.
Walter Benjamin
Image
There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Books, too, begin like the week – with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday.
Walter Benjamin
Image
To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
Walter Benjamin