Quote

Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up.

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
Hours
Bed
Waking
Prediction
Ability
Fit
Shirts
Tissue
Lying
Lies
Fresh
Tightly
Happiness
Depends
Perfectly
Tissues
Next
Pure
Twenty
Woven
Life
Fine
Twenties
Fits
Like
Morning
Pick
Predictions
Four
Picks
Shirt
Incomparably

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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.
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The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.
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During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well
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All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.
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The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.
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To do justice to the figure of Kafka in its purity and its peculiar beauty one must never lose sight of one thing: it is the purity and beauty of a failure.
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The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.
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Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse. Those accustomed to it must lead a Spartan life if they are not to go downhill. Hermits have observed, if for only this reason, a frugal diet. For it is only in company that eating is done justice food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received.
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By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action.
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You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.
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In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.
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Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.
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He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging... This confers the tone and bearing of genuine reminiscences. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil.
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We do not always proclaim loudly the most important thing we have to say. Nor do we always privately share it with those closest to us, our intimate friends, those who have been most devotedly ready to receive our confession.
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I would like to metamorphose into a mouse-mountain.
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Art teaches us to see into things. Folk art and kitsch allow us to see outward from within things.
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Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.
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To perceive the aura of an object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return.
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We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.
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Kitsch offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, wihtout sublimation.
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