Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.
Walter Benjamin
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Worth
Trouble
Feeling
Lives
Living
Feelings
Destructive
Character
Suicide
Life
Destruction
More quotes by Walter Benjamin
In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.
Walter Benjamin
These are days when no one should rely unduly on his competence. Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.
Walter Benjamin
A blind determination to save the prestige of personal existence, rather than, through an impartial disdain for its impotence and entanglement, at least to detach it from the background of universal delusion, is triumphing almost everywhere.
Walter Benjamin
Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.
Walter Benjamin
Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas.
Walter Benjamin
All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate.
Walter Benjamin
As Hegel put it, only when it is dark does the owl of Minerva begin its flight. Only in extinction is the collector comprehend.
Walter Benjamin
Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.
Walter Benjamin
The distracted person, too, can form habits.
Walter Benjamin
Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.
Walter Benjamin
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.
Walter Benjamin
Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present.
Walter Benjamin
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
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
It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed.
Walter Benjamin
Death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
Walter Benjamin
Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].
Walter Benjamin
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
I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order.
Walter Benjamin
Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed, an architectural one, where it is constructed, and finally a textile one, where it is woven.
Walter Benjamin
