A Quote by Walter Benjamin

As Hegel put it, only when it is dark does the owl of Minerva begin its flight. Only in extinction is the collector comprehend.

Walter Benjamin

Quote Topics

Begin Collector Comprehend Dark Does Extinction Flight Hegel Minerva Only Owl Put

Quote Author

Walter Benjamin
German - Critic
July 15, 1892 - September 26, 1940

Understanding is always in some sense retrospective, which is what Hegel meant by remarking that the owl of Minerva flies only at night.

Terry Eagleton

The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Why come to Trude? I asked myself. And I already wanted to leave. You cand resume your flight whereever you like," they say to me, "but you will arive at another Trude, absolutely the same, detail by detail. The world is covered by a sole Trude which does not begin and does not end. Only the names of the airport changes.

Italo Calvino

Sometimes I am a collector of data, and only a collector, and am likely to be gross and miserly, piling up notes, pleased with merely numerically adding to my stores.

Charles Fort

Harry Potter, he sends a message on Owl Mail while us poor old muggles have to make do with instantaneous emails and texting. Oh, if only we could be like you Harry Potter, with your four day owl delivery!

Craig Ferguson

O you virtuous owle, The wise Minerva's only fowle.

Philip Sidney

How fascinating is death, the extinction of life. One moment here and the next gone. The light put out and only the empty bag of the body left.

Henry Van Dyke

God does not work by only one method, paint in only one color, play in only one key, nor does he make only one star shine onto the earth.

Eberhard Arnold

Of course, I started as a collector. A true collector. I can remember as if it were only yesterday the heart-pounding excitement as I spread out upon the floor of my bedroom The Edward G. Robinson Collection of Rare Cigar Bands. I didn't play at collecting. No cigar anywhere was safe from me.

Edward G. Robinson

I'm a collector. I was born a collector. I came out of the womb a collector. I can trace it back to childhood - collecting used keys.

Micah Lexier

No man has ever appreciated the gospel until the law has first revealed him to himself. It is only against the inky blackness of the night sky that the stars begin to appear, and it is only against the dark background of sin and judgment that the gospel shines forth.

John Stott

Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.

Wallace Stegner

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.

Joan Didion

The owl is one of the most curious creatures. A bird that stays awake when the rest of the world sleeps. They can see in the dark. I find that so interesting, to be mired in reality when the rest of the world is dreaming. What does he see and what does he know that the rest of the world is missing?