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Walter Benjamin Biography

Walter Benjamin

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (German: [ˈvaltɐ ˈbɛnjamiːn]; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School, and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was also related by law to German political theorist Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to his cousin, Günther Anders.

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Walter Benjamin Quotes

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.

Acquiring, Book, Books, Praiseworthy, Reading, Writing

I came into the world under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.

Delay, Planet, Saturn, Star, Stars, World

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

Changes, Circumstances, Historical, Humanity, Long, Perception

All efforts to make politics aesthetic culminate in one thing, war.

Aesthetic, Effort, Efforts, Make, Politics, War

Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.

Conquer, Destruction, Ecstasy, Living, Procreation, Substance

Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas.

Ideas, Running, Stop, Writing

The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.

Character, Feeling, Feelings, Lives, Suicide, Trouble

Kitsch offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, wihtout sublimation.

Distance, Emotional, Effort

Melancholy betrays the world for the sake of knowledge. But in its tenacious self-absorption it embraces dead objects in its contemplation, in order to redeem them

Self, Order, World, Tenacious, Redeem

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.

Art, Authentic, Basis, Ritualistic, Unique, Use

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.

Abortion, Advantage, Past, Present, Use, Views

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.

Closets, Existence, Mundane Life, Privacy, Private, Rotten

Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.

Advice, Counsel, Life, Real, Wisdom, Woven

If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.

Dream, Eggs, Hatches, Physical, Sleep

Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.

Authority, Borrowed, Death, Everything, Stories, Storytelling

Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up.

Fine, Life, Like, Lying, Morning

History breaks down into images, not into stories.

Break, Breaking Down, Breaks, Down, Images, Stories

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.

Art, Aversion, Criticism, Enjoyed, Sharper

Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form - it may be called fleeting or eternal - is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.

Fleeting, Life, Space, Talking, Time, Years

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.

Book, Failure, Prove, Proves, Treasure, Treasures

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