Walter Benjamin Quotes - Page 3

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• During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well

  Walter Benjamin

  Long, Humanity, Historical

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.232, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.

  Walter Benjamin

  Power, Facts, Life Is

  Walter Benjamin, Peter Demetz (1986). “Reflections: essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writing”, Schocken

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• This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceived a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistably propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. The storm is what we call progress.

  Walter Benjamin

  Angel, Past, Wings

  "Theses on the Philosophy of History". Book by Walter Benjamin, 1955.

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• Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.

  Walter Benjamin

  Conviction, Leap, Strollers

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland (1996). “Selected Writings: 1913-1926”, p.481, Harvard University Press

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• The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.

  Walter Benjamin

  Reality, Thinking, Perception

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.233, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas.

  Walter Benjamin

  Running, Writing, Ideas

  Walter Benjamin, Michael William Jennings, Edmund Jephcott (2016). “One-Way Street”, p.47, Harvard University Press

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• The killing of a criminal can be moral-but never its legitimation.

  Walter Benjamin

  Criminals, Moral, Killing

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland (1996). “Selected Writings: 1913-1926”, p.481, Harvard University Press

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• All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.

  Walter Benjamin

  Blow, Left Hand, Lefties

  Walter Benjamin (2016). “One-Way Street”, p.19, Harvard University Press

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

  Walter Benjamin

  Men, Cases, Reader

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland, Gary Smith (2002). “Selected Writings: 1935-1938”, p.145, Harvard University Press

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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.

  Walter Benjamin

  Suicide, Character, Feelings

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland, Gary Smith (1999). “Gesammelte Schriften”, p.542, Harvard University Press

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• He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.

  Walter Benjamin

  Lying, Dresses, Vests

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• In the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in flashes. The text is the thunder rolling long afterward.

  Walter Benjamin

  Long, Rolling, Fields

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• 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.

  Walter Benjamin

  Light, Shining, Doe

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• To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it "the way it really was"...It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.

  Walter Benjamin

  Memories, Mean, Past

  "On the Concept of History" (1940) See Ranke 1

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• Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.

  Walter Benjamin

  Order, Balance, Extremes

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.70, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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

  Writing, Musical, Woven

  Walter Benjamin (2016). “One-Way Street”, p.44, Harvard University Press

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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.

  Walter Benjamin

  Information, Language, Hallmark

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.79, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We do not always proclaim loudly the most important thing we have to say. Nor do we always privately share it with those closest to us, our intimate friends, those who have been most devotedly ready to receive our confession.

  Walter Benjamin

  Important, Confession, Intimate

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland, Gary Smith (1999). “Gesammelte Schriften”, p.240, Harvard University Press

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• Literature tells very little to those who understand it.

  Walter Benjamin

  Literature, Littles

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland (1996). “Selected Writings: 1913-1926”, p.253, Harvard University Press

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• The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.

  Walter Benjamin

  Happiness, Beauty, Ideas

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland, Gary Smith (1999). “Gesammelte Schriften”, p.239, Harvard University Press

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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

  Mean, Cities, Doe

  Walter Benjamin (2006). “Berlin Childhood Around 1900”, p.1, Harvard University Press

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• Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.

  Walter Benjamin

  Book, Debate, Harlots

  Walter Benjamin (2016). “One-Way Street”, p.51, Harvard University Press

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• Man is the namer; by this we recognize that through him pure language speaks. All nature, insofar as it communicates itself, communicates itself in language, and so finally in man. Hence, he is the lord of nature and can give names to things. Only through the linguistic being of things can he get beyond himself and attain knowledge of them-in the name. God's creation is completed when things receive their names from man, from whom in name language alone speaks.

  Walter Benjamin

  Men, Names, Giving

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• To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.

  Walter Benjamin

  Book, Shelves, True Freedom

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland, Gary Smith (1999). “Gesammelte Schriften”, p.490, Harvard University Press

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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. Street names must speak to the urban wanderer like the snapping of dry twigs, and little streets in the heart of the city must reflect the times of day, for him, as clearly as a mountain valley. This art I acquired rather late in life; it fulfilled a dream, of which the first traces were labyrinths on the blotting papers in my school notebooks.

  Walter Benjamin

  Notebook, Dream, Art

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland, Gary Smith (2002). “Selected Writings: 1935-1938”, p.352, Harvard University Press

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