Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation. – Walter Benjamin
All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate. – Walter Benjamin
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
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. – Walter Benjamin
What a strange thing is the propagation of life! A bubble of seed which may be spilt in a whores lap, or in the orgasm of a voluptuous dream, might (for aught we know) have formed a Caesar or a Bonaparte — there is nothing remarkable recorded of their sires, that I know of. – Lord (George Gordon) Byron