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The good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment he opens his mouth.

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
Good
Brings
Mouths
Moment
Throbbing
Lost
Tidings
Moments
Opens
Past
Historian
May
Void
Heart
Mouth

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Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.
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History breaks down into images, not into stories.
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It is only for those without hope that hope is given.
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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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Not to find one’s way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one’s way in a city, as one loses one’s way in a forest, requires some schooling.
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If mythic violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates if the former threatens, the latter strikes if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood
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Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.
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Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.
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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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Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.
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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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In the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in flashes. The text is the thunder rolling long afterward.
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The illiterate of the future will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph.
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Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.
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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.
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In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.
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The killing of a criminal can be moral-but never its legitimation.
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Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.
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The distracted person, too, can form habits.
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There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.
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