Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
Not to find one's way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one's way in a city, as one loses one's way in a forest, requires some schooling. Street names must speak to the urban wanderer like the snapping of dry twigs, and little streets in the heart of the city must reflect the times of day, for him, as clearly as a mountain valley. This art I acquired rather late in life; it fulfilled a dream, of which the first traces were labyrinths on the blotting papers in my school notebooks.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Navigating a city requires learning and experience, akin to understanding nature's complexities.
Walter Benjamin reflects on the art of finding one's way through an urban environment, comparing it to skillfully navigating a forest. He suggests that the ability to understand and appreciate a city requires a depth of knowledge similar to that acquired through experiences in nature, emphasizing the importance of learning to decipher the urban landscape with the same intuition one has in the natural world.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about urban development, one might say, 'As Walter Benjamin insightfully noted, navigating a city requires a deeper understanding and appreciation of its intricacies.'
More from Walter Benjamin
All quotes →The illiterate of the future will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph.
If mythic violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood
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.
Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.
I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order.
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Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
Some people take the view that we happen by accident. I think that there is something much deeper, of which we have very little inkling at the moment.
Justice and peace can only thrive together, never apart.
There is a certain indolence in us, a wish not to be disturbed, which tempts us to think that when things are quiet, all is well. Subconsciously, we tend to give the preference to 'social peace,' though it be only apparent, because our lives and possessions seem then secure. Actually, human beings acquiesce too easily in evil conditions; they rebel far too little and too seldom. There is nothing noble about acquiescence in a cramped life or mere submission to superior force.
In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.
No form of liberty is worth a darn [sic] which doesn't give us the right to do wrong now and then.