To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“to great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives.” — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books! — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“To great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they work throughout their lives.” — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
Books, too, begin like the week – with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“And the non-reading of books, you will object, should be characteristic of all collectors? This is news to me, you may say.… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
The book borrower...proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share Image
“The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than of convictions, and of such facts as have scarcely… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
“It should be pointed out that certain correlative concepts retain their meaning, and possibly their foremost significance, if they are referred exclusively to man.… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
“to great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives.” — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
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… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
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… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
For what is the program of the bourgeois parties? A bad poem on springtime, filled to bursting with metaphors. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
There was the pedestrian who wedged himself into the crowd, but there was also the flneur who demanded elbow room and was unwilling to… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction. — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us… — Walter Benjamin Copy Share
