The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Walter Benjamin More Quotes by Walter Benjamin More Quotes From Walter Benjamin The crowd is the veil through which the familiar city beckons to the flâneur as phantasmagoria-now a landscape, now a room. Walter Benjamin crowds veils cities Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928]. Walter Benjamin constellations stars ideas For what is the program of the bourgeois parties? A bad poem on springtime, filled to bursting with metaphors. Walter Benjamin springtime metaphor party Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens. Walter Benjamin notebook aliens authority 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 cheerful age character The killing of a criminal can be moral-but never its legitimation. Walter Benjamin criminals moral killing 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 abortion views past 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-life rotten privacy Books, too, begin like the week – with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday. Walter Benjamin sunday memories book For every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter. Walter Benjamin messiah gates might 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 consistency time giving 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 turtles personality people 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 fate men hands 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 important feelings death 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 prove treasure book 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-villages enough-time writing Every monument of civilization is a monument of barbarism Walter Benjamin barbarism inspirational civilization 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 location unique art Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby. Walter Benjamin girl baby book As long as there is still one beggar around, there will still be myth. Walter Benjamin beggar myth long
