Quote

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
Stop
Written
Running
Ideas
Writing
Copying
Never
Fill
Already
Inspiration

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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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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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[Photography] has become more and more subtle, more and more modern, and the result is that it is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish heap without transfiguring it. Not to mention a river dam or electric cable factory: in front of these, photography can now only say, How beautiful!
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The experience of our generation: that capitalism will not die a natural death.
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Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed, an architectural one, where it is constructed, and finally a textile one, where it is woven.
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Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.
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As long as there is still one beggar around, there will still be myth.
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For me, it was like this: pronounced antipathy to conversing about matters of practical life, the future, dates, politics. You are fixated on the intellectual sphere as a man possessed may be fixated on the sexual: under its spell, sucked into it.
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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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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.
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All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.
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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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In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.
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In the world's structure dream loosens individuality like a bad tooth.
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Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.
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The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.
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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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Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.
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Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.
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The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.
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