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You follow the same paths of thought as before. Only, they appear strewn with roses.

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
Thought
Strewn
Cannabis
Roses
Paths
Appear
Rose
Follow
Path

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Literature tells very little to those who understand it.
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To the lover the loved one always appears as solitary.
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By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action.
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[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!
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During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well
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I came into the world under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.
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Marx says that revolutions are the locomotives of world history. But the situation may be quite different. Perhaps revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake.
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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.
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Experience has taught me that the shallowest of communist platitudes contains more of a hierarchy of meaning than contemporary bourgeois profundity.
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The distracted person, too, can form habits.
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How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!
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Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
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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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Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.
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Only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope.
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As long as there is still one beggar around, there will still be myth.
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Death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
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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.
Walter Benjamin
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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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You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.
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