Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock. – Walter Benjamin
The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again. – Walter Benjamin
The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out. – Walter Benjamin
The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble. – Walter Benjamin
There is no law of progress. Our future is in our own hands, to make or to mar. It will be an uphill fight to the end, and would we have it otherwise? Let no one suppose that evolution will ever exempt us from struggles. You forget, said the Devil, with a chuckle, that I have been evolving too. – W. R. [William Ralph] Inge