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Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.

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
Realm
Realms
Ruins
Thought
Things
Allegories
Allegory

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All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.
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Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].
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Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.
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All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.
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Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.
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