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Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.
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
Cannibal
Lovingly
Spices
Genuine
Approach
Baby
Girl
Book
Polemics
More quotes by Walter Benjamin
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
Walter Benjamin
A bearer of news of death appears to himself as very important. His feeling - even against all reason - makes him a messenger from the realm of the dead.
Walter Benjamin
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
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
To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
Walter Benjamin
Kitsch offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, wihtout sublimation.
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
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.
Walter Benjamin
Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably.
Walter Benjamin
Rather than ask, What is the attitude of a work to the relations of production of its time? I should like to ask, What is its position in them.
Walter Benjamin
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
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
Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.
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
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.
Walter Benjamin
In other words, the unique value of the authentic work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty.
Walter Benjamin
All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.
Walter Benjamin
In the world's structure dream loosens individuality like a bad tooth.
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
In the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in flashes. The text is the thunder rolling long afterward.
Walter Benjamin
