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Benjamin Quotes

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Benjamin Quotes

“Leon actually laughed. "They have slushies up front." "Jesus Christ," Benjamin muttered. "Nordstrom's. Macy's. We could go to Paris for the spring season. I was expecting transatlantic flights." I figured ignoring that was best for all concerned. "Is there an Old Navy around here? They've got shorts and stuff." I caught the look Benjamin gave me. "What?" "Nothing. We just thought a svetocha would be more, well, difficult." Leon's mouth twitched. "I do seriously want a slushie." I tried a tentative smile. I definitely liked him now. "I haven't had one in ages. Maybe the guys outside - the double blonds - would want one, too?" For some reason Leon found that utterly fricking hysterical. H snorted and chuckled all the way through Housewares to the Health and Beauty section, and even Benjamin unbent enough to grin.”

“The furious energy with which Benjamin cast about for publishing venues was underlain by an equally ambitious reading program. Several books had a profound effect on him, and some were surprises - foremost among them Thomas Mann's 1924 epic, The Magic Mountain. [...] It was not only the sweeping and intimate portrayal of the key intellectual currents of the early twentieth century that Benjamin found compelling; it was also, his letter suggests, the perception that Thomas Mann had moved beyond the Nietzschean conservatism of his early years toward a new and more dialectical, if still pessimistic and mythically charged, Dionysian humanism (something epitomized in the protagonist's divagations in the chapter 'Snow').”

“The stakes in the debate between Benjamin and Schmitt on the state of exception can now be defined more clearly. The dispute takes place in a zone of anomie that, on the one hand, must be maintained in relation to the law at all costs, and, on the other, must be just as implacably released and freed from this relation. That is to say, at issue in the anomic zone is the relation between violence and law - in the last analysis, the status of violence as a cipher for human action. While Schmitt attempts every time to reinscribe violence within a juridical context, Benjamin responds to this gesture by seeking every time to assure it - as pure violence - an existence outside of law. For reasons that we must try to clarify, this struggle for anomie seems to be as decisive for Western politics as the gigantomachia peri tes ousias, the 'battle of giants concerning being', that defines Western metaphysics. Here, pure violence as the extreme political object, as the 'thing' of politics, is the counterpart to pure being, to pure existence as the ultimate metaphysical stakes; the strategy of the exception, which must ensure the relation between anomic violence and law, is the counterpart to the onto-theo-logical strategy aimed at capturing pure being the meshes of the logos.”

“withdrew His right hand that [once] blocked (הֵשִׁ֥יב אָחֹ֛ור יְמִינֹ֖ו) literally; “has-drawn back His-right-hand”. The last Hebrew word, listed above, invokes one of the tribes of Judah: Benjamin (#H1144 nymynb), which literally means: son of my right hand. David’s right hand was strengthened by his mighty men from the tribe of Benjamin: Ahiezer, Joash, Jeziel, Pelet, Beracah, Jehu, Ishmaiah, Jeremiah, Jahaziel, Johanan, Jozabad, Eluzai, Jerimoth, Bealiah, Shemariah, Shephatiah, Elkanah, Isshiah, Azarel, Joezer, Jashobeam, Joelah, and Zebadiah. (1Ch 12:1-7) pg 42”

“I agree. To me, it [galloping on horseback] is the essence of freedom—the power of the beast beneath you, the wind in your face, the thundering of the hooves. It is a great elixir for the soul.” “And does your soul need healing, Benjamin?” she asked quietly, gently running her fingertips across his bicep and down his forearm. He turned away from the view of the pond and looked at her with clear, blue eyes, his expression serious. He captured her fingers in the palm of his hand. “My healing started the day I met you. You are my elixir.” “Then perhaps you need another dose,” she whispered, her face upturned as she leaned closer to him.”

“Just as the flâneur wanders the Parisian Grands Boulevards, allowing disparate, shocklike experiences to be inscribed on his body even as they resonate in his memory, so the 'assistant' type, in a state of intoxication akin to a mystical trance, wanders through the Kafkan universe. In their blithe and groundless transparency, such figures alone seem capable of bringing to consciousness the alienating character of historical conditions.”