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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

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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
Sake
Redeem
Objects
Tenacious
Dead
Embraces
Knowledge
Absorption
Order
Betray
Self
Melancholy
World
Contemplation
Embrace
Betrays

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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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Kitsch offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, wihtout sublimation.
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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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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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It is in a small village in the Pyrenees where no one knows me 7that my life will come to a close.... There is not enough time remaining for me to write all the letters I would like to write.
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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. For what one has lived is at best comparable to a beautiful statue which has had all its limbs knocked off in transit, and now yields nothing but the precious block out of which the image of one's future must be hewn.
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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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The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.
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As long as there is still one beggar around, there will still be myth.
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Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
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Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.
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The distracted person, too, can form habits.
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Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information-hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.
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Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well.
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All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.
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The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the state of emergency in which we live is not the exception but the rule.
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Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.
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