Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Reason
Realms
Important
Appears
Even
News
Dead
Feeling
Bearer
Death
Messenger
Feelings
Messengers
Makes
Realm

More quotes by Walter Benjamin

Image
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.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.
Walter Benjamin
Image
There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.
Walter Benjamin
Image
[Photography] has become more and more subtle, more and more modern, and the result is that it is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish heap without transfiguring it. Not to mention a river dam or electric cable factory: in front of these, photography can now only say, How beautiful!
Walter Benjamin
Image
All disgust is originally disgust at touching.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed.
Walter Benjamin
Image
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.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Language has unmistakably made plain that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.
Walter Benjamin
Image
What we must demand from the photographer is the ability to put such a caption beneath his picture as will rescue it from the ravages of modishness and confer upon it a revolutionary use value.
Walter Benjamin
Image
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.
Walter Benjamin
Image
The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the state of emergency in which we live is not the exception but the rule.
Walter Benjamin
Image
These are days when no one should rely unduly on his competence. Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.
Walter Benjamin
Image
In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.
Walter Benjamin
Image
As long as there is still one beggar around, there will still be myth.
Walter Benjamin
Image
He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.
Walter Benjamin
Image
The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.
Walter Benjamin
Image
All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.
Walter Benjamin
Image
There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
Walter Benjamin
Image
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