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Only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope.

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
Sake
Ones
Hope
Given
Hopeless

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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. For what one has lived is at best comparable to a beautiful statue which has had all its limbs knocked off in transit, and now yields nothing but the precious block out of which the image of one's future must be hewn.
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He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.
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The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.
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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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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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For every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter.
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The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.
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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.
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There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
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True translation is transparent: it does not obscure the original, does not stand in its light, but rather allows pure language, as if strengthened by its own medium, to shine even more fully on the original.
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Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.
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How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!
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I came into the world under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.
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All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.
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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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Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.
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Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.
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Literature tells very little to those who understand it.
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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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