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The killing of a criminal can be moral-but never its legitimation.

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
Criminals
Killing
Moral
Never
Legitimation
Criminal

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To do justice to the figure of Kafka in its purity and its peculiar beauty one must never lose sight of one thing: it is the purity and beauty of a failure.
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A bearer of news of death appears to himself as very important. His feeling - even against all reason - makes him a messenger from the realm of the dead.
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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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Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.
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The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe
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You follow the same paths of thought as before. Only, they appear strewn with roses.
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We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.
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Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.
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Language has unmistakably made plain that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried.
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The film is the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter plays tricks on man.
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Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.
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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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There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.
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All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.
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In other words, the unique value of the authentic work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty.
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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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Mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.
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Bourgeois existence is the regime of private affairs . . . and the family is the rotten, dismal edifice in whose closets and crannies the most ignominious instincts are deposited. Mundane life proclaims the total subjugation of eroticism to privacy.
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Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
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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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