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The experience of our generation: that capitalism will not die a natural death.

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
Experience
Death
Capitalism
Generation
Generations
Dies
Natural

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The work of memory collapses time.
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We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.
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History breaks down into images, not into stories.
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Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
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Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.
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If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.
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Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably.
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The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe
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Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
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It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.
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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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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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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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You follow the same paths of thought as before. Only, they appear strewn with roses.
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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.
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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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