Ken

“Weder dem Vergangenen anheimfallen noch dem Zukünftigen. Es kommt darauf an, ganz gegenwärtig zu sein.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“It is reasonable to assume that it is just as hard for rich people grown poor to believe in their poverty as it is for poor people turned rich to believe in their wealth; the former seem carried away by a recklessness of which they are totally unaware, the latter seem possessed by a stinginess which actually is nothing but the old ingrained fear of what the next day may bring.”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“Anyone who cannot cope with life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate . . . but with his other hand he can jot down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different and more things than the others; after all, he is dead in his own lifetime and the real survivor.” —Franz Kafka, Diaries, entry of October 19, 1921”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“the poem that philosophically makes good the defect of languages,”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections