#de

Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred. ↗

— Walter Benjamin

#dead #experience #exploring #ground #instrument

The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing. ↗

— Walter Benjamin

#beauty #could #good #good thing #happiness

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. ↗

— Walter Benjamin

#art form #aversion #between #conventional #criticism

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

— Walter Benjamin

#borrowed #death #everything #his #sanction

Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know. ↗

— Walter Benjamin

#applies #does #existence #go #hidden

It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed. ↗

— Walter Benjamin

#generated #incapable #into #irresponsible #judging

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

— Walter Benjamin

#destruction #ecstasy #frenzy #living #only

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like. ↗

— Walter Benjamin

#because #books #buy #could #dissatisfied

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

#betraying #coin #critic #criticism #fashion

To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists. ↗

— Arnold Bennett

#artists #brain #dead #experience #fact