It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us. Walter Benjamin More Quotes by Walter Benjamin More Quotes From Walter Benjamin Books and harlots have their quarrels in public. Walter Benjamin harlotsdebatebook The crowd is the veil through which the familiar city beckons to the flâneur as phantasmagoria-now a landscape, now a room. Walter Benjamin crowdsveilscities Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928]. Walter Benjamin constellationsstarsideas For what is the program of the bourgeois parties? A bad poem on springtime, filled to bursting with metaphors. Walter Benjamin springtimemetaphorparty Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens. Walter Benjamin notebookaliensauthority The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away. The destructive character is young and cheerful. For destroying rejuvenates, because it clears away the traces of our own age; it cheers, because everything cleared away means to the destroyer a complete reduction, indeed a rooting out, of his own condition. Walter Benjamin cheerfulagecharacter The killing of a criminal can be moral-but never its legitimation. Walter Benjamin criminalsmoralkilling 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. Walter Benjamin abortionviewspast Bourgeois existence is the regime of private affairs . . . and the family is the rotten, dismal edifice in whose closets and crannies the most ignominious instincts are deposited. Mundane life proclaims the total subjugation of eroticism to privacy. Walter Benjamin mundane-liferottenprivacy Books, too, begin like the week – with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday. Walter Benjamin sundaymemoriesbook For every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter. Walter Benjamin messiahgatesmight All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate. Walter Benjamin consistencytimegiving There was the pedestrian who wedged himself into the crowd, but there was also the flneur who demanded elbow room and was unwilling to forego the life of the gentleman of leisure. His leisurely appearance as a personality is his protest against the division of labour which makes people into specialists. it was also his protest against their industriousness. Around 1840 it was briefly fashionable to take turtles for a walk in the arcades. the flneurs liked to have the turtles set the pace for them. Walter Benjamin turtlespersonalitypeople 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. He is impelled by inertia, rather than curiosity, and nothing is more unlike the submissive apathy with which he hears his fate revealed than the alert dexterity with which the man of courage lays hands on the future. Walter Benjamin fatemenhands 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 importantfeelingsdeath 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 provetreasurebook It is in a small village in the Pyrenees where no one knows me 7that my life will come to a close.... There is not enough time remaining for me to write all the letters I would like to write. Walter Benjamin small-villagesenough-timewriting Every monument of civilization is a monument of barbarism Walter Benjamin barbarisminspirationalcivilization In other words, the unique value of the "authentic" work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty. Walter Benjamin locationuniqueart Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby. Walter Benjamin girlbabybook
