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In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.

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
Storyteller
Readers
Case
Reader
Cases
Every
Men
Counsel

More quotes by Walter Benjamin

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We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.
Walter Benjamin
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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.
Walter Benjamin
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How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!
Walter Benjamin
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A blind determination to save the prestige of personal existence, rather than, through an impartial disdain for its impotence and entanglement, at least to detach it from the background of universal delusion, is triumphing almost everywhere.
Walter Benjamin
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All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.
Walter Benjamin
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For only that which we knew and practiced at age 15 will one day constitute our attraction. And one thing, therefore, can never be made good: having neglected to run away from home.
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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Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
Walter Benjamin
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Art teaches us to see into things. Folk art and kitsch allow us to see outward from within things.
Walter Benjamin
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Not to find one’s way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one’s way in a city, as one loses one’s way in a forest, requires some schooling.
Walter Benjamin
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There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.
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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Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.
Walter Benjamin
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If mythic violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates if the former threatens, the latter strikes if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood
Walter Benjamin
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We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.
Walter Benjamin
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The killing of a criminal can be moral-but never its legitimation.
Walter Benjamin
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To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
Walter Benjamin
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In the convulsions of the commodity economy, we begin to recognize the monuments of the bourgeoisie as ruins even before they have crumbled.
Walter Benjamin
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Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.
Walter Benjamin
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The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.
Walter Benjamin