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Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written.
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
Writing
Copying
Never
Fill
Already
Inspiration
Stop
Written
Running
Ideas
More quotes by Walter Benjamin
Melancholy betrays the world for the sake of knowledge. But in its tenacious self-absorption it embraces dead objects in its contemplation, in order to redeem them
Walter Benjamin
Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.
Walter Benjamin
Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.
Walter Benjamin
All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.
Walter Benjamin
It is only for those without hope that hope is given.
Walter Benjamin
Books, too, begin like the week – with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday.
Walter Benjamin
I came into the world under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.
Walter Benjamin
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.
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
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.
Walter Benjamin
There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
Walter Benjamin
Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.
Walter Benjamin
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.
Walter Benjamin
These are days when no one should rely unduly on his competence. Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.
Walter Benjamin
To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
Walter Benjamin
All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.
Walter Benjamin
Rather than ask, What is the attitude of a work to the relations of production of its time? I should like to ask, What is its position in them.
Walter Benjamin
In the end, we get older, we kill everyone who loves us through the worries we give them, through the troubled tenderness we inspire in them, and the fears we ceaselessly cause.
Walter Benjamin
Art teaches us to see into things. Folk art and kitsch allow us to see outward from within things.
Walter Benjamin
Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.
Walter Benjamin
