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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
Failure
Fervor
Books
Guards
Read
Collectors
Book
Treasures
Much
Proves
Borrower
Borrowed
Inveterate
Treasure
Borrowers
Prove
Collector
More quotes by Walter Benjamin
Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.
Walter Benjamin
Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
Walter Benjamin
Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information-hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.
Walter Benjamin
Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.
Walter Benjamin
For only that which we knew and practiced at age 15 will one day constitute our attraction. And one thing, therefore, can never be made good: having neglected to run away from home.
Walter Benjamin
Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well.
Walter Benjamin
The illiterate of the future will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph.
Walter Benjamin
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.
Walter Benjamin
Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
Walter Benjamin
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.
Walter Benjamin
Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas.
Walter Benjamin
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.
Walter Benjamin
The work of memory collapses time.
Walter Benjamin
We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.
Walter Benjamin
The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
Walter Benjamin
It is only for those without hope that hope is given.
Walter Benjamin
All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate.
Walter Benjamin
Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.
Walter Benjamin
Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present.
Walter Benjamin
No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.
Walter Benjamin
