Quote

We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.

Walter Benjamin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Belief
Fact
Collector
Facts
Preserving
Book
Collectors
Collect
Preserve
Preserves
Books

More quotes by Walter Benjamin

Image
The book borrower...proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures...as by his failure to read these books.
Walter Benjamin
Image
I would like to metamorphose into a mouse-mountain.
Walter Benjamin
Image
What has been forgotten is never something purely individual. Everything forgotten mingles with what has been forgotten of the prehistoric world, forms countless, uncertain, changing compounds, yielding a constant flow of new, strange products.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.
Walter Benjamin
Image
There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
Walter Benjamin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Books, too, begin like the week – with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday.
Walter Benjamin
Image
You follow the same paths of thought as before. Only, they appear strewn with roses.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
Walter Benjamin
Image
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.
Walter Benjamin
Image
All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.
Walter Benjamin
Image
The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.
Walter Benjamin
Image
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.
Walter Benjamin
Image
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
Image
Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed.
Walter Benjamin
Image
Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
Walter Benjamin