QUOTES by Walter Benjamin
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Freud’s fundamental thought, on which these remarks are based, is formulated by the assumption that “consciousness comes into being at the site of a memory trace.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than of convictions, and of such facts as have scarcely ever become the basis of convictions.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
The book borrower… proves himself to be an in venerate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures… as by his failure to read these books.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
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.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
Indeed, is not the homecoming amateur with his vast number of artistic snaps more contented than the hunter, returning laden with the game which is only of value to the trader.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize “how it really was.” It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
True translation is transparent: it does not obscure the original, does not stand in its light, but rather allows pure language, as if strengthened by its own medium, to shine even more fully on the original.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
To great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they work throughout their lives.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
In the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in flashes. The text is the thunder rolling long afterward.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
Man's gift of seeing resemblances is nothing other than a rudiment of the powerful compulsion in former times to become and behave like something else.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
Historical materialism has every reason to distinguish itself sharply from bourgeois habits of thought. Its founding concept is not progress but actualization.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
Thus there is in the life of a collector a dialectical tensions between the poles of disorder and order.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
Unlimited goodwill. Suspension of the compulsive anxiety complex. The beautiful "character" unfolds. All of those present become comically iridescent. At the same time one is pervaded by their aura.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
Every passion borders on chaos, that of the collector on the chaos of memory.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
As Hegel put it, only when it is dark does the owl of Minerva begin its flight. Only in extinction is the collector comprehend.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
What draws the reader to the novel is the hope of warming his shivering life with a death he reads about
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
What, in the end, makes advertisements superior to criticism? Not what the moving red neon says—but the fiery pool reflecting it in the asphalt.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
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.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
To great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
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.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
Books, too, begin like the week – with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
The crowd is the veil through which the familiar city beckons to the fl�neur as phantasmagoria-now a landscape, now a room.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
The film is the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter plays tricks on man.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
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.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
I came into the world under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin