Walter Benjamin
14 quotations
Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.
Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.
Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.
The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.
Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.
The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.
To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.
The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.
The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.
Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
Separation penetrates the disappearing person like a pigment and steeps him in gentle radiance.