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 More Quotes by Walter Benjamin More Quotes From Walter Benjamin Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text. Walter Benjamin men memories book 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 auras mean looks I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. Walter Benjamin boredom order book How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books! Walter Benjamin cities book travel Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction. Walter Benjamin strollers leap conviction The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again. Walter Benjamin flash time past 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 fashion ideas art The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing. Walter Benjamin beauty happiness ideas The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out. Walter Benjamin epic dying art Painting, by its nature, cannot provide an object of simultaneous collective reception... as film is able to do today... And while efforts have been made to present paintings to the masses in galleries and salons, this mode of reception gives the masses no means of organizing and regulating their response. Thus, the same public which reacts progressively to a slapstick comedy inevitably displays a backward attitude toward Surrealism. Walter Benjamin attitude giving mean What we must demand from the photographer is the ability to put such a caption beneath his picture as will rescue it from the ravages of modishness and confer upon it a revolutionary use value. Walter Benjamin demand photographer use Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Walter Benjamin writing running ideas For me, it was like this: pronounced antipathy to conversing about matters of practical life, the future, dates, politics. You are fixated on the intellectual sphere as a man possessed may be fixated on the sexual: under its spell, sucked into it. Walter Benjamin intellectual may men The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed. Walter Benjamin seeds fruit understood 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 All the decisive blows are struck left-handed. Walter Benjamin left-hand lefties blow It is only for those without hope that hope is given. Walter Benjamin without-hope given 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 musical woven writing 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 guilt law blood You follow the same paths of thought as before. Only, they appear strewn with roses. Walter Benjamin cannabis path rose
