Quote

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.

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
Forgotten
Perverse
Foundation
Antiquity
Taking
Foundations
Already
Bare
Enemy
Assault
Antiquities
House
Ritual
Erected
Long
Bombs
Toll
Life
Lays
Tolls

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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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As Hegel put it, only when it is dark does the owl of Minerva begin its flight. Only in extinction is the collector comprehend.
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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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For what is the program of the bourgeois parties? A bad poem on springtime, filled to bursting with metaphors.
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The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.
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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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To the lover the loved one always appears as solitary.
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No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.
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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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Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written.
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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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In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.
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Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.
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Literature tells very little to those who understand it.
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You follow the same paths of thought as before. Only, they appear strewn with roses.
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Mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.
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Language has unmistakably made plain that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried.
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