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The book borrower...proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures...as by his failure to read these books.

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
Books
Guards
Read
Collectors
Book
Treasures
Much
Proves
Borrower
Borrowed
Inveterate
Treasure
Borrowers
Prove
Collector
Failure
Fervor

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Books, too, begin like the week – with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday.
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A blind determination to save the prestige of personal existence, rather than, through an impartial disdain for its impotence and entanglement, at least to detach it from the background of universal delusion, is triumphing almost everywhere.
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The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the state of emergency in which we live is not the exception but the rule.
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All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.
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No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.
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The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.
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History breaks down into images, not into stories.
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Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.
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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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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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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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Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse. Those accustomed to it must lead a Spartan life if they are not to go downhill. Hermits have observed, if for only this reason, a frugal diet. For it is only in company that eating is done justice food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received.
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Only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope.
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The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.
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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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To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.
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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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Rather than ask, What is the attitude of a work to the relations of production of its time? I should like to ask, What is its position in them.
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In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.
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