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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

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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
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Past
Compulsion
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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.
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There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.
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The good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment he opens his mouth.
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In the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in flashes. The text is the thunder rolling long afterward.
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To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.
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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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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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I would like to metamorphose into a mouse-mountain.
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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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