Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
Walter BenjaminRead
Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance - nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city - as one loses oneself in a forest - that calls for a quite different schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Losing oneself in a city's chaos can be more enriching than merely navigating through it.
Walter Benjamin emphasizes that the experience of getting lost in a city, much like in a forest, requires a deeper understanding and connection to one's surroundings. It suggests that true exploration and discovery come from immersion and attentiveness, rather than just a surface-level comprehension of directions and landmarks.
Themes
ExplorationCityImmersionWanderingDiscovery
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about traveling, one could use this quote to highlight the beauty of exploring unknown places.
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.
Walter BenjaminRead
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
Walter BenjaminRead
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.
Walter BenjaminRead
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.
Walter BenjaminRead
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.
Walter BenjaminRead
Similar quotes
Although sometimes the morbid is also the transcendent, the transcendent cannot be reduced to the morbid.
Siri HustvedtRead
In the wake of 9/11, we were desperate to bring those responsible for the brutal attacks to justice. But even that urgency did not justify torture. The United States must be held to a higher standard than our enemies, yet some of our actions did not clear that bar.
Dianne FeinsteinRead
The Miss America Pageant reinforces a belief that women are merely how they look and how they please.
Gloria SteinemRead
People 'demand' the opportunity to gamble away money they do not have, just like people 'demand' money from loan sharks at extortionate interest rates. This is a warped, empty type of freedom, in which the powerful are free to exploit the vulnerable.
David LammyRead
You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary
Frederick BuechnerRead
The cat joined the Re-education Committee and was very active in it for some days. She was seen one dag sitting on a roof and talking to some sparrows who were just out of her reach. She was telling them that all animals were now comrades and that any sparrow who chose could come and perch on her paw; but the sparrows kept their distance.
George OrwellRead