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To perceive the aura of an object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return.
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
Ability
Aura
Means
Auras
Look
Idealism
Looks
Invest
Mean
Perceive
Object
Objects
Return
More quotes by Walter Benjamin
Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas.
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All disgust is originally disgust at touching.
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Kitsch offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, wihtout sublimation.
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Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.
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As Hegel put it, only when it is dark does the owl of Minerva begin its flight. Only in extinction is the collector comprehend.
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These are days when no one should rely unduly on his competence. Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.
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The present, which, as a model of Messianic time, comprises the entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgment, coincides with the stature which the history of mankind has in the universe.
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The film is the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter plays tricks on man.
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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.
Walter Benjamin
All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.
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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.
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He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging... This confers the tone and bearing of genuine reminiscences. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil.
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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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History breaks down into images, not into stories.
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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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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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Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.
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It is only for those without hope that hope is given.
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Art teaches us to see into things. Folk art and kitsch allow us to see outward from within things.
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Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.
Walter Benjamin
