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History breaks down into images, not into stories.

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
Breaks
Images
Break
History
Stories

More quotes by Walter Benjamin

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All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.
Walter Benjamin
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He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say.
Walter Benjamin
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It is only for those without hope that hope is given.
Walter Benjamin
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The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.
Walter Benjamin
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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.
Walter Benjamin
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There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
Walter Benjamin
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Marx says that revolutions are the locomotives of world history. But the situation may be quite different. Perhaps revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake.
Walter Benjamin
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Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.
Walter Benjamin
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All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.
Walter Benjamin
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The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.
Walter Benjamin
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Kitsch offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, wihtout sublimation.
Walter Benjamin
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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
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The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.
Walter Benjamin
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No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.
Walter Benjamin
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The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.
Walter Benjamin
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To perceive the aura of an object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return.
Walter Benjamin
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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.
Walter Benjamin
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Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].
Walter Benjamin
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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.
Walter Benjamin
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Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.
Walter Benjamin