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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

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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
Past
Seized
Never
Flash
Time
Recognized
Instant
Image
Picture
Seen
Flits
True
Flashes

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All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.
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Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.
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History breaks down into images, not into stories.
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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.
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Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.
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Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.
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The good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment he opens his mouth.
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Every monument of civilization is a monument of barbarism
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