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Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.

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
Way
Regarded
Method
Oneself
Ways
Books
Reading
Praiseworthy
Book
Acquiring
Writing
Dissatisfied

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All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.
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The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.
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You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.
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Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.
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It is only for those without hope that hope is given.
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Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.
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The film is the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter plays tricks on man.
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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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There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.
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All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.
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Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.
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It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed.
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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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To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it the way it really was...It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.
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The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
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Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have at the moment of commemoration.
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