We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.
More Quotes from Walter Benjamin:
He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.Walter Benjamin
To do justice to the figure of Kafka in its purity and its peculiar beauty one must never lose sight of one thing it is the purity and beauty of a failure.
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Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information -- hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.
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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.
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The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.
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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.
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Based on Topics: Life QuotesBased on Keywords: antiquities, enervated
Never follow the crowd.
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I was down in Washington when 9/11 happened. We were in the middle of putting together the next summer season, and all I could think of was something somehow must make sense to us. Our Town kept coming into my mind.
Joanne Woodward
The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.
Empedocles