Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Past
Recognize
Doe
Memory
Mean
Danger
Really
Hold
Flashes
Way
Memories
Articulate
Moment
Seize
Means
Historically
Moments
Flash
More quotes by Walter Benjamin
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.
Walter Benjamin
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
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
Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.
Walter Benjamin
As Hegel put it, only when it is dark does the owl of Minerva begin its flight. Only in extinction is the collector comprehend.
Walter Benjamin
History breaks down into images, not into stories.
Walter Benjamin
To the lover the loved one always appears as solitary.
Walter Benjamin
Literature tells very little to those who understand it.
Walter Benjamin
You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.
Walter Benjamin
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
The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.
Walter Benjamin
All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.
Walter Benjamin
Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably.
Walter Benjamin
Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.
Walter Benjamin
I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order.
Walter Benjamin
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
The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.
Walter Benjamin
The work of memory collapses time.
Walter Benjamin
All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.
Walter Benjamin
We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.
Walter Benjamin
