Umberto Eco Quotes

Umberto Eco quotes (showing 1-50 of 254)
“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: books 2,323 people liked it like “I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: fathers, parenting, wisdom 368 people liked it like “We live for books.” ― Umberto Eco tags: bibliophiles, book-lovers, books, reading 348 people liked it like “When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.” ― Umberto Eco tags: umberto-eco 199 people liked it like “I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.” ― Umberto Eco tags: existentialism 183 people liked it like “I love the smell of book ink in the morning.” ― Umberto Eco tags: books, morning, reading, smells 115 people liked it like “The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.” ― Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality tags: cowardice, heroism 106 people liked it like “Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.” ― Umberto Eco 95 people liked it like “Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has

already been told.” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: books, story-telling, storytelling 80 people liked it like “All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.” ― Umberto Eco 69 people liked it like “What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: love 65 people liked it like “To survive, you must tell stories.” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before tags: stories-writing 61 people liked it like “Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the pace; otherwise you stop right away.” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: reading 59 people liked it like “I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows that he cannot say to her "I love you madly", because he knows that she knows (and that she knows he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still there is a solution. He can say "As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly". At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly it is no longer possible to talk innocently, he will nevertheless say what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her in an age of lost innocence.” ― Umberto Eco tags: postmodern, postmodernism 58 people liked it like “When you are on the dancefloor, there is nothing to do but dance.” ― Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 52 people liked it like “What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?” ― Umberto Eco, Baudolino 51 people liked it like “Then why do you want to know?"

"Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: knowledge, learning, understanding 49 people liked it like “People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.” ― Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery tags: dogma, evil, fanaticism, fundamentalism, religion 47 people liked it like “We were clever enough to turn a laundry list into poetry.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 44 people liked it like “Love is wiser than wisdom.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 41 people liked it like “Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treausre of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: books, knowledge, learning, libraries, wisdom 37 people liked it like “As the man said, for every complex problem there’s a simple solution, and it’s wrong.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 37 people liked it like “Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.”" -” ― Umberto Eco 36 people liked it like “Sometimes I look a the Moon, and I imagine that those darker spots are caverns, cities, islands, and the places that shine are those where the sea catches the light of the sun like the glass of a mirror...I would like to tell of war and friendship among the various parts of the body, the arms that do battle with the feet, and the veins that make love with the arteries or the bones with the marrow. All the stories I would like to write persecute me when I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, the little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful'.” ― Umberto Eco

33 people liked it like “A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 31 people liked it like “Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: apophenia, connection, fact, fiction 29 people liked it like “Where else? I belong to a lost generation and am comfortable only in the company of others who are lost and lonely. ” ― Umberto Eco 29 people liked it like “Daytime sleep is like the sin of the flesh; the more you have the more you want, and yet you feel unhappy, sated and unsated at the same time.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: sleep 29 people liked it like “There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics… Cretins don’t even talk; they sort of slobber and stumble…Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation…Fools don’t claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend, they’re magnificent…Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says that all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too, therefore cats bark…Morons will occasionally say something that’s right, but they say it for the wrong reason…A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn’t know the ropes. The moron proves his thesis; he has logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic on the other hand, doesn’t concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars…There are lunatics who don’t bring up the Templars, but those who do are the most insidious. At first they seem normal, then all of a sudden…” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 28 people liked it like “Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow.” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: poetry, writing 27 people liked it like

“It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once.” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before tags: death-and-dying 26 people liked it like “When the writer (or the artist in general) says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules.” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: art, writing 26 people liked it like “All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before tags: obsession, on-writing, stories, storytelling, writing 22 people liked it like “I believe all sin, love, glory are this: when you slide down the knotted sheets, escaping from Gestapo headquarters, and she hugs you, there, suspended, and she whispers that she's always dreamed of you. The rest is just sex, copulation, the perpetuation of the vile species.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 21 people liked it like “Monsters exist because they are part of the divine plan, and in the horrible features of those same monsters the power of the creator is revealed.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 21 people liked it like “I felt like poisoning a monk.” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: motivation, writing 20 people liked it like “The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 19 people liked it like “A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.” ― Umberto Eco 19 people liked it like

“If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things.” ― Umberto Eco 18 people liked it like “Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossibe courses are given. The school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: education, humor, nonsense 17 people liked it like “the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life.” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before tags: beauty, death, irreligion, life, religion 17 people liked it like “True learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 17 people liked it like “I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: courage, weakness 17 people liked it like “Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: fanaticism, prophets, religion 17 people liked it like “...It would hardly be a waste of time if sometimes even the most advanced students in the cognitive sciences were to pay a visit to their ancestors. It is frequently claimed in American philosophy departments that, in order to be a philosopher, it is not necessary to revisit the history of philosophy. It is like the claim that one can become a painter without having ever seen a single work by Raphael, or a writer without having ever read the classics. Such things are theoretically possible; but the 'primitive' artist, condemned to an ignorance of the past, is always recognizable as such and rightly labeled as naïf. It is only when we consider past projects revealed as utopian or as failures that we are apprised of the dangers and possibilities for failure for our allegedly new projects. The study of the deeds of our ancestors is thus more than an

atiquarian pastime, it is an immunological precaution.” ― Umberto Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language 16 people liked it like “The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: writing 16 people liked it like “American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100 degrees centigrade in plastic thermos cups, usually obligatory in railroad stations for purposes of genocide, whereas coffee made with an American percolator, such as you find in private houses or in humble luncheonettes, served with eggs and bacon, is delicious, fragrant, goes down like pure spring water, and afterwards causes severe palpitations, because one cup contains more caffeine than four espressos.” ― Umberto Eco, How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays tags: coffee, umberto-eco 16 people liked it like “The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: meaning, method, order, utility 15 people liked it like “I seem to know all the cliches, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely because all the cliches intertwine in an unrealistic way and you can't disentangle them. But when you actually live a cliche, it feels brand new, and you are unashamed.” ― Umberto Eco tags: antiquarian, books, loana, mystery, queen, vintage 15 people liked it like “Love flourishes in expectation. Expectation strolls through the spacious fields of Time towards Opportunity.” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before

Umberto Eco quotes (showing 51-100 of 254)
“To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.” ― Umberto Eco, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods tags: context, escape, escapism, fiction, interpretation, narrative, reading, real-world, storytelling

15 people liked it like “It was awkward, revisiting a world you have never seen before: like coming home, after a long journey, to someone else’s house.” ― Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 15 people liked it like “But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before tags: story, teaching, writing 14 people liked it like “Each of us is sometimes a cretin, a fool, a moron, or a lunatic. A normal person is just a reasonable mix of these components, these four ideal types.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 14 people liked it like “A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would have not written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 13 people liked it like “Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: compass, labyrinths, possibilities 13 people liked it like “Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.” ― Umberto Eco 12 people liked it like “Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion. (Casablanca, or, The Clichés Are Having a Ball)” ― Umberto Eco, Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers tags: art, clichés 10 people liked it like “Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards; those without moral principles usually wrap a flag around themselves, and those bastards always talk about the purity of race.” ― Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery 10 people liked it like

“The older I grow and the more I abandon myself to God's will, the less I value intelligence that wants to know and will that wants to do; and as the only element of salvation I recognize faith, which can wait patiently, without asking too many questions.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: faith 10 people liked it like “Memory is a stopgap for humans, for whom time flies and what is passed is passed.” ― Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 10 people liked it like “The real hero is always a hero by mistake.” ― Umberto Eco 10 people liked it like “This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 9 people liked it like “Idiot. Above her head was the only stable point in the cosmos, the only refuge from the damnation of the panta rei, and she guessed it was the Pendulum's business. A moment later the couple went off -- he, trained on some textbook that had blunted his capacity for wonder, she, inert and insensitive to the thrill of the infinite, both oblivious of the awesomeness of their encounter -- their first and last encounter -with the One, the Ein-Sof, the Ineffable. How could you fail to kneel down before this altar of certitude?” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 9 people liked it like “Dios ha muerto, el arte dejó de existir, la historia ha llegado a su fin, y yo mismo no me siento del todo bien.” ― Umberto Eco tags: umberto-eco 8 people liked it like “Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him ... These things I know, Ubertino; I also have belonged to those groups of men who believe they can produce the truth with white-hot iron. Well, let me tell you, the white heat of truth comes from another flame.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: inquisition, torture, truth 8 people liked it like

“What did I really think fifteen years ago? A nonbeliever, I felt guilty in the midst of all those believers. And since it seemed to me that they were in the right, I decided to believe, as you might decide to take an aspirin: It can't hurt and you might get better.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 8 people liked it like “Your masters at Oxford have taught you to idolize reason, drying up the prophetic capacities of your heart!” ― Umberto Eco 8 people liked it like “A mystic is a hysteric who has met her confessor before her doctor.” ― Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery 7 people liked it like “but I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric.” ― Umberto Eco 7 people liked it like “I dared, for the first and last time in my life, to express a theological conclusion: "But how can a necessary being exist totally polluted with the possible? What difference is there, then, between God and primigenial chaos? Isn't affirming God's absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard to His own choices tantamount to demonstrating that God does not exist?” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: atheism, chaos, creation, divine-will, omnipotence, theology 7 people liked it like “Is it possible to say "It was a beautiful morning at the end of November" without feeling like Snoopy?” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: clichés, originality, stereotypes, writing 7 people liked it like “We stopped to browse in the cases, and now that William - with his new glasses on his nose - could linger and read the books, at every title he discovered he let out exclamations of happiness, either because he knew the work, or because he had been seeking it for a long time, or finally because he had never heard it mentioned and was highly excited and titillated. In short, for him every book was like a fabulous animal that he was meeting in a strange land.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: bibliophilia, books 7 people liked it like “I will tell you the deeper significance of this, which otherwise might seem a banal hydraulic joke. Caus knew that if one fills a vessel with water and seals it at the top, the water, even if one then opens a hole in the bottom, will not come out. But if one opens a hole in the top, also, the water spurts out below." "Isn't that obvious?" I said. "Air enters at the top and presses the water down." "A typical scientific explanation, in which the cause is mistaken for the effect, or vice

versa. The question is not why the water comes out in the second place, but why it refuses to come out in the first case." "And why does it refuse?" Garamond asked eagerly. "Because, if it came out, it would leave a vacuum in the vessel, and nature abhors a vacuum. Nequaquam vacui was a Rosicrucian principle, which modern science has forgotten." "Excuse me," Belbo said to Agliè, "but your argument is simply post hoc ergo ante hoc. What follows causes what came before. You must not think linearly. The water in these fountains doesn't. Nature doesn't; nature knows nothing of time. Time is an invention of the West.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 7 people liked it like “Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don’t like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don’t like it.” ― Umberto Eco tags: competition, envy, reading, writing 7 people liked it like “How clear everything becomes when you look from the darkness of a dungeon.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: perception 7 people liked it like “How beautiful was the spectacle of nature not yet touched by the often perverse wisdom of man!” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 7 people liked it like “I should be at peace. I have understood. Don't some say that peace comes when you understand? I have understood. I should be at peace. Who said that peace derives from the contemplation of order, order understood, enjoyed, realized without residuum, in joy and truimph, the end of effort? All is clear, limpid; the eye rests on the whole and on the parts and sees how the parts have conspired to make the whole; it perceives the center where the lymph flows, the breath, the root of the whys....” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 7 people liked it like “If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television.” ― Umberto Eco tags: education, teaching, television 7 people liked it like “After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes?” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

tags: beauty, homer, iliad, justification, mythology, passage-of-time, passion, past, right, troy, truth, war 7 people liked it like “In the Middle Ages, cathendrals and convents burned like tinder; imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a World War II movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in flames.” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: essentials, fire, imagination, middle-ages, obviousness, writing 6 people liked it like “Thus we have on stage two men, each of whom knows nothing of what he believes the other knows, and to deceive each other reciprocally both speak in allusions, each of the two hoping (in vain) that the other holds the key to his puzzle.” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before tags: deception, games, knowledge, truth 6 people liked it like “I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.” ― Umberto Eco tags: adolescence, poetry, talent, youth 6 people liked it like “I suspect that there is no serious scholar who doesn’t like to watch television. I’m just the only one who confesses” ― Umberto Eco 6 people liked it like “You’ll come back To me . . . It’s written in the stars, you see, you’ll come back. You’ll come back, it’s a fact that I am strong because I do believe in you.” ― Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 5 people liked it like “That day, I began to be incredulous. Or, rather, I regretted having been credulous. I regretted having allowed myself to be borne away by a passion of the mind. Such is credulity. ” ― Umberto Eco 5 people liked it like “He thought he would become accustomed to the idea, not yet understanding that it is useless to become accustomed to the loss of a father, for it will never happen a second

time: might as well leave the wound open. ” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before 5 people liked it like “There, Master Niketas,’ Baudolino said, ‘when I was not prey to the temptations of this world, I devoted my nights to imagining other worlds. A bit with the help of wine, and a bit with that of the green honey. There is nothing better than imagining other worlds,’ he said, ‘to forget the painful one we live in. At least so I thought then. I hadn’t yet realized that, imagining other worlds, you end up changing this one.” ― Umberto Eco, Baudolino tags: imagination 5 people liked it like “The cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopedia.” ― Umberto Eco, Serendipities: Language and Lunacy tags: wikipedia 5 people liked it like “For the enemy to be recognized and feared, he has to be in your home or on your doorstep.” ― Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery 5 people liked it like “A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: books, curiosity, knowledge, seduction, vice 5 people liked it like “I don't know, maybe we're always looking for the right place, maybe it's within reach, but we don't recognize it. Maybe to recognize it, we have to believe in it.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 5 people liked it like “I seal that which was not to be said in the tomb that I become.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 5 people liked it like “penitenziagite! watch out for the draco who cometh in futurum to gnaw your anima! death is super nos! pray the santo pater come to liberar nos a malo and all our sin! ha ha, you like this negromanzia de domini nostri jesu christi! et anco jois m'es dols e plazer m'es dolors...cave el diabolo! semper lying in wait for me in some angulum to snap at my heels. but salvatore is not stupidus! bonum monsasterium, and aqui refectorium and pray to dominum nostrum. and the resto is not worth merda. amen.

no?” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 4 people liked it like “Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 4 people liked it like “Le regole per scrivere bene (adattate da Umberto Eco) 1. Evita le allitterazioni, anche se allettano gli allocchi. 2. Non è che il congiuntivo va evitato, anzi, che lo si usa quando necessario. 3. Evita le frasi fatte: è minestra riscaldata. 4. Esprimiti siccome ti nutri. 5. Non usare sigle commerciali & abbreviazioni etc. 6. Ricorda (sempre) che la parentesi (anche quando pare indispensabile) interrompe il filo del discorso. 7. Stai attento a non fare... indigestione di puntini di sospensione. 8. Usa meno virgolette possibili: non è “fine”. 9. Non generalizzare mai. 10.Le parole straniere non fanno affatto bon ton. 11.Sii avaro di citazioni. Diceva giustamente Emerson: “Odio le citazioni. Dimmi solo quello che sai tu.” 12.I paragoni sono come le frasi fatte. 13.Non essere ridondante; non ripetere due volte la stessa cosa; ripetere è superfluo (per ridondanza s’intende la spiegazione inutile di qualcosa che il lettore ha già capito). 14.Solo gli stronzi usano parole volgari. 15.Sii sempre più o meno specifico. 16.L'iperbole è la più straordinaria delle tecniche espressive. 17.Non fare frasi di una sola parola. Eliminale. 18.Guardati dalle metafore troppo ardite: sono piume sulle scaglie di un serpente.

19.Metti, le virgole, al posto giusto. 20.Distingui tra la funzione del punto e virgola e quella dei due punti: anche se non è facile. 21.Se non trovi l’espressione italiana adatta non ricorrere mai all’espressione dialettale: peso e! tacòn del buso. 22.Non usare metafore incongruenti anche se ti paiono “cantare”: sono come un cigno che deraglia. 23.C’è davvero bisogno di domande retoriche? 24.Sii conciso, cerca di condensare i tuoi pensieri nel minor numero di parole possibile, evitando frasi lunghe — o spezzate da incisi che inevitabilmente confondono il lettore poco attento — affinché il tuo discorso non contribuisca a quell’inquinamento dell’informazione che è certamente (specie quando inutilmente farcito di precisazioni inutili, o almeno non indispensabili) una delle tragedie di questo nostro tempo dominato dal potere dei media. 25.Gli accenti non debbono essere nè scorretti nè inutili, perchè chi lo fà sbaglia. 26.Non si apostrofa un’articolo indeterminativo prima del sostantivo maschile. 27.Non essere enfatico! Sii parco con gli esclamativi! 28.Neppure i peggiori fans dei barbarismi pluralizzano i termini stranieri. 29.Scrivi in modo esatto i nomi stranieri, come Beaudelaire, Roosewelt, Niezsche, e simili. 30.Nomina direttamente autori e personaggi di cui parli, senza perifrasi. Così faceva il maggior scrittore lombardo del XIX secolo, l’autore del 5 maggio. 31.All’inizio del discorso usa la captatio benevolentiae, per ingraziarti il lettore (ma forse siete così stupidi da non capire neppure quello che vi sto dicendo). 32.Cura puntiliosamente l’ortograffia. 33.Inutile dirti quanto sono stucchevoli le preterizioni. 34.Non andare troppo sovente a capo. Almeno, non quando non serve. 35.Non usare mai il plurale majestatis. Siamo convinti che faccia una pessima impressione. 36.Non confondere la causa con l’effetto: saresti in errore e dunque avresti sbagliato. 37.Non costruire frasi in cui la conclusione non segua logicamente dalle premesse: se tutti facessero così, allora le premesse conseguirebbero dalle conclusioni.

38.Non indulgere ad arcaismi, apax legomena o altri lessemi inusitati, nonché deep structures rizomatiche che, per quanto ti appaiano come altrettante epifanie della differanza grammatologica e inviti alla deriva decostruttiva – ma peggio ancora sarebbe se risultassero eccepibili allo scrutinio di chi legga con acribia ecdotica – eccedano comunque le competente cognitive del destinatario. 39.Non devi essere prolisso, ma neppure devi dire meno di quello che. 40. Una frase compiuta deve avere.” ― Umberto Eco 4 people liked it like “omne animal triste post coitum” ― Umberto Eco tags: inspirational 4 people liked it like “But can I really will anything? At this moment I feel the pleasure of being stone, the sun warms me, the wind makes acceptable this adjustment of my body, I have no intention of ceasing to be a stone. Why? Because I like it. So then I too am slave to a passion, which advises me against wanting freely its opposite. However, willing, I could will. And yet I do not. How much freer am I than a stone?” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before 4 people liked it like “Not bad, not bad at all," Diotallevi said. "To arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: philosophy, philosophy-of-religion, religion, theology, truth 4 people liked it like “Както отявленият атеист, който вижда нощем дявола и безбожнически разсъждава така: "Той безспорно не съществува, сигурно е от храносмилането, но рогатият не го знае и си вярва в своята преобърната теология. Кое би могло на него, уверения, че съществува, да вдъхне страх?" Прекръстваш се и той, доверчив, изчезва сред серен облак.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

Umberto Eco quotes (showing 101-150 of 254)
“libraries are fascinating places: sometimes you feel you are under the canopy of a railway station, and when you read books about exotic places there's a feeling of travelling to distant lands” ― Umberto Eco 4 people liked it like “A library's ideal function is to be a little bit like a bouquiniste's stall, a place for trouvailles.” ― Umberto Eco 4 people liked it

like “INTERVIEWER Do you believe in God? ECO Why does one love a certain person one day and discover the next day that the love is gone? Feelings, alas, disappear without justification, and often without a trace. INTERVIEWER If you don’t believe in God, then why have you written at such great length about religion? ECO Because I do believe in religion. Human beings are religious animals, and such a characteristic feature of human behavior cannot be ignored or dismissed.” ― Umberto Eco 4 people liked it like “Hoy no salir en televisión es un signo de elegancia.” ― Umberto Eco tags: televisión, umberto-eco 4 people liked it like “I stood back up and looked down at my feces. A lovely snail-shell architecture, still steaming. Borromini. My bowels must be in good shape, because everyone knows you have nothing to worry about unless your feces are to soft or downright liquid. I was seeing my shit for the first time (in the city you sit on the bowl, then flush right away, without looking). I was now calling it shit, which I think is what people call it. Shit is the most personal and private thing we have. Anyone can get to know the rest your facial expression, your gaze, your gestures. Even your naked body: at the beach, at the doctor's, making love. Even your thoughts, since usually you express them, or else others guess them from the way you look at them or appear embarrassed. Of course, there are such things as secret thoughts... but in general thoughts too are revealed. Shit, however, is not. Except for an extremely brief period of your life, when your mother is still changing your diapers, it is all yours. And since my shit at that moment must not have been all that different from what I had produced over the course of my past life, I was in that instant reuniting with my old, forgotten self, undergoing the first experience capable of merging with countless previous experiences, even those from when I did my business in the vineyards as a boy. Perhaps if I took a god look around, I would find the remains of those shits past, and then, triangulating properly, Clarabelle's treasure.

But I stopped there. Shit was not my linden-blossom tea, of course not, how could I have expected to conduct my recherche with my sphincter? In order to rediscover lost time, one should have not diarrhea but asthma. Asthma is pneumatic, it is the breath (however labored) of the spirit: it is for the rich, who can afford cork-lined rooms. The poor, in the fields, attend less to spiritual than to bodily functions. And yet I felt not disinherited but content, and I mean truly content, in a way I had not felt since reawakening. The ways of the Lord are infinite, I said to myself, they go even through the butthole.” ― Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 4 people liked it like “If culture did not filter, it would be inane — as inane as the formless, boundless Internet is on its own. And if we all possessed the boundless knowledge of the Web, we would be idiots! Culture is an instrument for making a hierarchical system of intellectual labor.” ― Umberto Eco 4 people liked it like “We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 4 people liked it like “But why do some people support [the heretics]?" "Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power." "Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?" "That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: double-standards, heresy, orthodoxy, power 4 people liked it like “Μου φτάνει που ξέρω να διαβάζω, γιατί έτσι μαθαίνω αυτά που δεν ξέρω, ενώ όταν γράφεις, γράφεις μόνο αυτά που ξέρεις ήδη.” ― Umberto Eco tags: reading, ανάγνωση 4 people liked it like “I returned to the courtyard and saw that the sun had grown weaker. Beautiful and clear as it had been, the morning (as the day approached the completion of its first half) was becoming damp and misty. Heavy clouds moved from the north and were invading the top of the mountain, covering it with a light brume. It seemed to be fog, and perhaps fog was also rising from the ground, but at that altitude it was difficult to distinguish the mists that rose from below and those that come down from above. It was becoming hard to discern the bulk of the more distant buildings.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: fog, mist, morning, seeing 4 people liked it

like “We were interrupted by a girl with a strawberry birthmark on her noes; she had some papers in her hand and asked if we had signed the petition for the imprisoned Argentinean comrades. Belbo signed without reading it. "They're even worse of than I am," he said to Diotallevi, who was regarding him with a bemused expression. "He can't sign," Belbo said to the girl. "He belongs to a small Indian sect that forbids its members to write their own names. Many of them are in jail because of government persecution." The girl looked sympathetically at Diotallevi and passed the petition to me. "And who are they?" I asked. "What do you mean, who are they? Argentinean comrades." "But what group do they belong to?" "The Tacuarus, I think." "The Tacuarus are fascists," I said. As if I knew one group from the other. "Fascist pig," the girl hissed at me. She left.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 4 people liked it like “...we can only add to the world, where we believe it ends, more parts similar to those we already know (an expanse made again and always of water and land, stars and skies).” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before 4 people liked it like “I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 4 people liked it like “On sober reflection, I find few reasons for publishing my Italian version of an obscure, neo-Gothic French version of a seventeenth century Latin edition of a work written in Latin by a German Monk toward the end of the fourteenth century...First of all, what style should I employ?” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 4 people liked it like “From shit, thus, I extract pure Shinola” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: writing 4 people liked it like “Hay cosas que ves venir, no es que te enamores porque te enamoras, te enamoras porque en ese período tenías una desesperada necesidad de enamorarte. En los

períodos en que tienes ganas de enamorarte debes fijarte bien dónde te metes: como haber bebido un filtro, de esos que hacen que uno se enamore del primero que pasa. Podría ser un ornitorrinco.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 3 people liked it like “El alma humana es la verdadera cópula del mundo porque, por un lado, se dirige hacia lo divino y, por el otro, se introduce en el cuerpo y domina la naturaleza.” ― Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages tags: alma, cuerpo, divino, mundo, naturaleza 3 people liked it like “The light in her eyes was beyond description, yet it did not instill improper thoughts: it inspired a love tempered by awe, purifying the hearts it inflamed.” ― Umberto Eco tags: love, love-at-first-sight 3 people liked it like “Whoever reflects on four things I would be better if he were never born: that which is above, that which is below, that which is before, that which is after.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 3 people liked it like “The list could surely go on, and there is nothing more wonderful than a list, instrument of wondrous hypotyposis.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: irony, lists 3 people liked it like “Η πρώτη αρετή ενός τίμιου ανθρώπου, είναι η περιφρόνηση για τη θρησκεία, που θέλει από μας να φοβόμαστε το πιο φυσικό πράγμα του κόσμου, το θάνατο, να μισούμε το μόνο ωραίο πράγμα που μας έδωσε η μοίρα, τη ζωή, και να ελπίζουμε σ' ένα ουρανό όπου στην αιώνια μακαριότητα ζουν μόνο οι πλανήτες, που δεν έχουν ούτε επιβραβεύσεις ούτε καταδίκες, μα μονάχα την αιώνια κίνησή τους στην αγκαλιά του κενού. Να είστε δυνατοί όπως οι σοφοί της αρχαίας Ελλάδας και να κοιτάζετε το θάνατο με μάτι σταθερό και άφοβο. Ο Ιησούς παραΐδρωσε περιμένοντάς τον. Μα τι είχε να φοβηθεί αφού θ' ανασταινόταν;” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before 3 people liked it like “And so I fell devoutly asleep and slept a long time, because young people seem to need sleep more than the old, who have already slept so much and are preparing to sleep for all eternity.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 3 people liked it like “The print does not always have the same shape as the body that impressed it, and it doesn't always derive from the pressure of a body. At times it reproduces the impression a body has left in our mind: it is the print of an idea.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

tags: ideas 3 people liked it like “There was no plot... and I discovered it by mistake. William of Baskerville” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 3 people liked it like “But if there is no cosmic Plan? What a mockery, to live in exile when no one sent you there. Exile from a place, moreover, that does not exist.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 3 people liked it like “... luckily, Eden is soon populated. The ethical dimension begins when the other appears on the scene.” ― Umberto Eco, Five Moral Pieces tags: ethics 3 people liked it like “Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all.” ― Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics tags: lies, semiotics, truth 3 people liked it like “It takes a little time, but the pleasures of cooking begin before the pleasures of the palate, and preparing means anticipating ...” ― Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery 3 people liked it like “Usually the recipe for a bestseller is to give people what they want. My challenge is and was: Give them what they do not expect. Be severe with them. The world of media is full of easy answers, wash-and-wear philosophies, instant ecstacies, whatme-worry Epiphanies. Probably readers want a little more.” ― Umberto Eco 3 people liked it like “Here he was holding the clear proof of the existence of other skies, but at the same time without having to ascend beyond the celestial spheres, for he intuited many worlds in a piece of coral. Was there any need to calculate the number of forms which the atoms of the Universe could create--burning at the stake all those who said their number was not finite--when it sufficed to meditate for years on one of these marine objects to realize how the deviation of a single atom, whether willed by God or prompted by Chance, could generate inconceivable Milky Ways?” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before 3 people liked it like

“He had prepared his death much earlier, in his imagination, unaware that his imagination, more creative than he, was planning the reality of that death.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 3 people liked it like “Once upon a time there were mass media, and they were wicked, of course, and there was a guilty party. Then there were the virtuous voices that accused the criminals. And Art (ah, what luck!) offered alternatives, for those who were not prisoners to the mass media. Well, it's all over. We have to start again from the beginning, asking one another what's going on.” ― Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality tags: art, culture, mass-media, superficiality 3 people liked it like “You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery. Hatred is the true primordial passion. It is love that’s abnormal. That is why Christ was killed: he spoke against nature. You don’t love someone for your whole life – that impossible hope is the source of adultery, matricide, betrayal of friends … But you can hate someone for your whole life – provided he’s always there to keep your hatred alive. Hatred warms the heart.” ― Umberto Eco 3 people liked it like “Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.” ― Umberto Eco, Baudolino tags: history 3 people liked it like “You are always born under the wrong sign, and to live in this world properly you have to rewrite your own horoscope day by day.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: inspirational, wisdom-inspirational 2 people liked it like “Mystical additions and subtractions always come out the way you want.” ― Umberto Eco 2 people liked it like “Todo concepto filosófico, tomado en su sentido más genérico, explica cualquier cosa.” ― Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages tags: concepto, filosofía 2 people liked it like “William was deeply humiliated. I tried to comfort him; I told him that for three days he had been looking for a text in Greek and it was natural in the course of his examination for him to discard all books not in Greek. And he answered that it is

certainly human to make mistakes, but there are some human beings who make more than others, and they are called fools, and he was one of them, and he wondered whether it was worth the effort to study in Paris and Oxford if one was then incapable of thinking that manuscripts are also bound in groups, a fact even novices know, except stupid ones like me, and a pair of clowns like the two of us would be a great success at fairs, and that was what we should do instead of trying to solve mysteries, especially when we were up against people far more clever than we.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 2 people liked it like “But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.” ― Umberto Eco 2 people liked it like “And when someone suggests you believe in a proposition, you must first examine it to see whether it is acceptable, because our reason was created by God, and whatever pleases our reason can but please divine reason, of which, for that matter, we know only what we infer from the processes of our own reason by analogy and often by negation.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 2 people liked it like “I transcribe my text with no concern for timeliness. In the years when I discovered the Abbé Vallet volume, there was a widespread conviction that one should write only out of a commitment to the present, in order to change the world. Now, after ten years or more, the man of letters (restored to his loftiest dignity) can happily write out of pure love of writing. And so I now feel free to tell, for sheer narrative pleasure, the story of Adso of Melk, and I am comforted and consoled in finding it immeasurably remote in time (now that the waking of reason has dispelled all the monsters that its sleep had generated), gloriously lacking in any relevance for our day, atemporally alien to our hopes and our certainties.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 2 people liked it like “But it’s atheists who say that the world wasn’t made by anyone, and you say you’re not an atheist . . ." I’m not because I can’t bring myself to believe that all these things we see around us —the way trees and fruits grow, and the solar system, and our brains—came about by chance. They’re too well made. And therefore there must have been a creating mind. God.” ― Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 2 people liked it like “[W]hen I put Jorge in the library I did not yet know he was the murderer. He acted on his own, so to speak. And it must not be thought that this is an 'idealistic' position, as if I were saying that the characters have an autonomous life and the author, in a kind of trance, makes them behave as they themselves direct him. That kind of nonsense belongs in term papers. The fact is that the characters are obliged to act

according to the laws of the world in which they live. In other words, the narrator is the prisoner of his own premises.” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: characters, creative-process, fictional-universe, writing 2 people liked it like “The flame consists of a splendid clarity, of an unusual vigor, and od an ingenious ardor, but possesses the splendid clarity that it may illuminate and the ingenious ardor that it may burn.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 2 people liked it like “The fine thing about pacts with the devil is that when you sign them you are well aware of their conditions. Otherwise, why would you be recompensed with hell?” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: choices, destiny, devil, fate, responsibility, self-deception 2 people liked it like “El diablo no es el príncipe de la materia, el diablo es la arrogancia del espíritu, la fe sin sonrisa, la verdad jamás tocada por la duda.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: religion 2 people liked it like “А стига бе! - каза Белбо. Само пиемонтец може да разбере чувството, което се влага в този израз на учтиво удивление. Нито един от неговите еквиваленти на други езици или диалекти не бимогъл да възпроизведе върховното безразличие, фатализма, с които той утвърждава непоклатимото убеждение, че другите са създания на едно твърде непохватно божество.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 2 people liked it like “Le pregunté cómo se llamaba el gato y contestó que los gatos no se llaman porque no son cristianos como los perros” ― Umberto Eco 2 people liked it like “Privado de vuestra mirada soy ciego pues no me veis, mudo pues no me hablàis, desmemoriado pues de mì no acordàis” ― Umberto Eco tags: novela 2 people liked it like “True,' I said, amazed. Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or devine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then a place of a long, centuriesold murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of

secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose Get quotes daily Join Goodreads

Umberto Eco > Quotes
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Umberto Eco quotes (showing 151-200 of 254)
“Quase inebriado,gozava então da sua presença nas coisas que via,e através delas desejava-a,satisfazendo-me à vista delas.E,no entanto,sentia uma dor,porque ao mesmo tempo sofria por uma ausência,mesmo sendo feliz com tantos fantasmas de uma presença.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 2 people liked it like “Jacopo Belbo didn't understand that he had had his moment and that it would have to be enough for him, for all his life. Not recognizing it, he spent the rest of his days seeking something else, until he damned himself. ” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 2 people liked it like “I did not know then what Brother William was seeking, and to tell the truth, I still do not know today, and I presume he himself did not know, moved as he was solely by the desire for truth, and by the suspicion - which I could see he always harbored - that the truth was not what was appearing to him at any given moment.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: seeking, suspicion, truth 2 people liked it like “There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past ("en me retraçant ces détails, j'en suis à me demander s'ils sont réels, ou bien si je les ai rêvés"). As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: books, dreams, imagination, magic, visions, writing 2 people liked it like “For centuries, as pope and emperor tore each other apart in their quarrels over power, the excluded went on living on the fringe, like lepers, of whom true lepers are only the illustration ordained by God to make us understand this wondrous parable, so that in saying 'lepers' we would understand 'outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the cities.' But we did not understand; the mystery of

leprosy has continued to haunt us because we have not recognized the nature of the sign.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: discrimination, exclusion, leprosy, poverty 2 people liked it like “stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 2 people liked it like “Porque de tres cosas depende la belleza: en primer lugar, de la integridad o perfección, y por eso consideramos feo lo incompleto; luego, de la justa proporción, o sea de la consonancia; por último, de la claridad y la luz.” ― Umberto Eco 2 people liked it like “Agora selo o que não devia ser dito,no túmulo em que me torno.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 2 people liked it like “Pengetahuan tidak hanya terdiri atas mengenai apa yang harus dan dapat kita lakukan, tetapi juga tahu apa yang mungkin tidak usah dilakukan (Kata Willian dalam The Name of the Rose)” ― Umberto Eco 2 people liked it like “Die Menschen tun das Böse nie so vollständig und begeistert, wie wenn sie es aus religiöser Überzeugung tun.” ― Umberto Eco, Il cimitero di Praga tags: das-böse, evil, religion 2 people liked it like “I was the type who looked at discussions of What Is Truth only with a view toward correcting the manuscript. If you were to quote "I am that I am," for example, I thought that the fundamental problem was where to put the comma, inside the quotation marks or outside.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 2 people liked it like “We'll have to see," Belbo said. He rummaged in his drawer and took out some sheets of paper. "Potio-section..." He looked at me, saw my bewilderment. "Potio-section, as everybody knows, of course, is the art of slicing soup. No, no," he said to Diotallevi. "It's not the department, it's a subject, like Mechanical Avunculogratulation or Pylocatabasis. They all under the same heading of Tetrapyloctomy." "What's tetra...?" I asked. "The art of splitting hairs four ways. This is the department of useless techniques. Mechanical Avunculogratulation, for example, is how to build machines for greeting uncles. We're not sure, though, if Pylocatabasis belongs, since it's the art of being

saved by a hair. Somehow that doesn't seem completely useless." "All right, gentlemen," I said, "I give up. What are you two talking about?" "Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossible courses are given. The school's main is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: nonsense 2 people liked it like “The book is like the wheel - once invented, it cannot be bettered.” ― Umberto Eco, This Is Not the End of the Book 2 people liked it like “You're innocent, Casaubon. You ran away instead of throwing stones, you got your degree, you didn't shoot anybody. Yet a few years ago I felt you, too, were blackmailing me. Nothing personal, just generational cycles. And then last year, when I saw the Pendulum, I understood everything." "Everything?" "Almost everything. You see, Casaubon, even the Pendulum is a false prophet. You look at it, you think it's the only fixed point in the cosmos. but if you detach it from the ceiling of the Conservatoire and hang it in a brothel, it works just the same. And there are other pendulums: there's one in New York, in the UN building, there's one in the science museum in San Francisco, and God knows how many others. Wherever you put it, Foucault's Pendulum swings from a motionless point while the earth rotates beneath it. Every point of the universe is a fixed point: all you have to do is hang the Pendulum from it." "God is everywhere." "In a sense, yes. That's why the Pendulum disturbs me. It promises the infinite, but where to put the infinite is left to me. So it isn't enough to worship the Pendulum; you still have to make a decision, you have to find the best point for it. And yet..." "And yet?" "And yet... You're not taking me seriously by any chance, are you, Casaubon? No, I can rest easy; we're not the type to take things seriously.... Well, as I was saying, the feeling you have is that you've spent a lifetime hanging the Pendulum in many paces, and it's never worked, but there, in the Conservatoire, it works.... Do you think there are special places in the universe? On the ceiling of this room, for example? No, nobody would believe that. You need atmosphere. I don't know, maybe we're always looking for the right place, maybe it's within reach, but we don't recognize it. Maybe, to recognize it, we have to believe in it. Well, let's go see Signor Garamond." "To hang the Pendulum?"

"Ah, human folly! Now we have to be serious. If you are going to be paid, the boss must see you, touch you, sniff you, and say you'll do. Come, let the boss touch you; the boss's touch heals scrofula.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 2 people liked it like “I didn't know how to define it -- hermetic skepticism? liturgical cynicism? -- this higher disbelief that led him to acknowledge the dignity of all the superstitions he scorned.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 2 people liked it like “But Roberto already knew what the Jesuit's real objection would be. Like that of the abbe on that evening of the duel when Saint-Savin provoked him: If there are infinite worlds, the Redemption can no longer have any meaning, and we are obliged either to imagine infinite Calvaries or to look on our terrestrial flowerbed as a priveleged spot of the Cosmos, on which God permitted His Son to descend and free us from sin, while the other worlds were not granted this grace--to the discredit of His infinite goodness. ” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before 2 people liked it like “A te închipui un element necesar în ordinea universului echivalează, pentru noi, oamenii cu lecturi serioase, cu ceea ce e superstiția pentru analfabeți. Nu se schimbă lumea cu ideile. Persoanele cu puține idei sunt mai puțin supuse erorii, se iau după ceea ce fac toți și nu deranjează pe nimeni, și reușesc, se îmbogățesc, ajung la poziții solide, deputați, oameni cu decorații, oameni de litere renumiți, academicieni, jurnaliști. Poți să mai fii nerod când îți faci așa de bine propriile afaceri? Prostul sunt eu, care am vrut să mă bat cu morile de vânt.” ― Umberto Eco, Il cimitero di Praga tags: ideology, politics 2 people liked it like “Only an unhinged movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks, of visual icebergs. It should display not one central idea but many. It should not reveal a coherent philosophy of composition. It must live on, and because of, its glorious ricketiness.” ― Umberto Eco 2 people liked it like “E nevoie de un dușman ca să-i dai poporului o speranță. Cineva a spus că patriotismul e ultimul refugiu al canaliilor: cine nu are principii morale se înfășoară de obicei într-un steag, iar bastarzii fac întotdeauna apel la puritatea stirpei lor. Identitatea națională este ultima resursă a dezmoșteniților. Or, simțul identității se întemeiază pe ură, ura împotriva celui ce nu-i identic. Trebuie să cultivi ura ca patos cetățenesc. Dușmanul e prietenul popoarelor. E nevoie oricând de cineva demn de a fi urât ca să te simți justificat în propria-ți mizerie. Ura este adevărata pasiune primordială. Iubirea reprezintă o situație anormală.” ― Umberto Eco, Il cimitero di Praga

tags: enemy, ideology, national-identity 2 people liked it like “Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to enquiry (William of Baskerville)” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 2 people liked it like “Aspirar a algo que no tendrás jamás, ¿es ésta la agudeza del más generoso entre los deseos?” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before tags: aspiraciones, deseo 2 people liked it like “A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis.” ― Umberto Eco, The Screen Education Reader: Cinema, Television, Culture tags: hypnosis, images, mass-media, reflection, symbols, television 2 people liked it like “Öyle bir an geliyor ki,insanın içinde bir şeyler kırılıyor;ne enerji ne istek kalıyor. Yaşamak gerekir diyorlar ama yaşamak son vadede intihara sürükleyen bir sorun” ― Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery 2 people liked it like “They say that a cat, if it falls from a window and hits its nose, can lose its sense of smell and then, because cats live by their ability to smell, it can no longer recognize things. I’m a cat that hit its nose.” ― Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 2 people liked it like “For such is the fate of parody: it must never fear exaggerating. If it strikes home, it will only prefigure something that others will then do without a smile--and without a blush--in steadfast virile seriousness.” ― Umberto Eco, How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays 2 people liked it like “The Massalians are not dualists but monarchians, and they have dealings with the infernal powers, and in fact some texts call them Borborites, from borboros, filth, because of the unspeakable things they do." "What do they do?" "The usual unspeakable things. Men and women hold in the palm of their hand, and raise to heaven, their own ignominy, namely, sperm or menstruum, then eat it, calling it the Body of Christ. And if by chance a woman is made pregnant, at the opportune moment they stick a hand into her womb, pull out the embryo, throw it into a mortar, mix in some honey and pepper, and gobble it up."

"How revolting, honey and pepper!" Diotallevi said.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: dark-rites, transubstantiation 2 people liked it like “Listening doesn't mean trying to understand. Anything, however trifling, may be of use one day. What matters is to know something that others don't know you know.” ― Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery 2 people liked it like “[...] there is one inexorable law of technology, and it is this: when revolutionary inventions become widely accessible, they cease to be accessible. Technology is inherently democratic, because it promises the same services to all; but it works only if the rich are alone using it. When the poor also adopt technology, it stops working. A train used to take two hours to go from A to B; then the motor car arrived, which could cover the same distance in one hour. For this reason cars were very expensive. But as soon as the masses could afford to buy them, the roads became jammed, and the trains started to move faster. Consider how absurd it is for the authorities constantly to urge people to use public transport, in the age of the automobile; but with public transport, by consenting not to belong to the elite, you get where you're going before members of the elite do.” ― Umberto Eco tags: elite, inventions, technology, transport 2 people liked it like “luther, he ruined the bible by translating it into their own language.” ― Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery 2 people liked it like “...living the same sorrows three times was a suffering, but it was a suffering to relive even the same joys. The joy of life is born from feeling, whether it be joy or grief, always of short duration, and woe to those who know they will enjoy eternal bliss.” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before 2 people liked it like “I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: writing 2 people liked it like “This has nothing to do with realism (even if it explains also realism). A completely real world can be constructed, in which asses fly and princesses are restored to life by a kiss, but that world, purely possible and unrealistic, must exist according to structures defined at the outset (we have to know whether it is a world where a princess can be restored to life only by the kiss of a prince, or also by that of a witch, and whether the princess's kiss tranforms only frogs into princes or also, for example, armadillos).” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose

tags: ontology 2 people liked it like “A civilização não chegará à perfeição enquanto a última pedra da última igreja não tiver caído sobre o último padre, e a Terra tiver sido libertada daquela escória.” ― Umberto Eco, Il cimitero di Praga 2 people liked it like “Os homens nunca praticam o mal tão completa e entusiasticamente como quando o fazem por convicção religiosa.” ― Umberto Eco, Il cimitero di Praga 2 people liked it like “A writer writes for writers, a non-writer writes for his next-door neighbor or for the manager of the local bank branch, and he fears (often mistakenly) that they would not understand or, in any case, would not forgive his boldness.” ― Umberto Eco, How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays 2 people liked it like “Комунистите твърдят, че религията е опиумът за народите. Вярно е, защото помага да се държат изкъсо поданиците ... ...бих казал, че религията е кокаинът на народите, защото религията е тласкала и тласка хората към войни, към избиване на неверниците и това е така и с християните, и с мюсюлманите, и с другите идолопоклонници, а пък ако преди негрите в Африка се задоволяваха само с кланета помежду си, мисионерите ги покръстиха и ги превърнаха в колониална армия, много подходяща да умира на фронта и да изнасилва бели жени едва-що влязла в града. Човеците никога не причиняват зло с толкова убеденост и ентусиазъм, колкото когато го правят по силата на религиозните си убеждения." ("Пражкото гробище")” ― Umberto Eco 2 people liked it like “Für jedes komplexe Problem gibt es eine einfache Lösung, und die ist die falsche.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 2 people liked it like “There are only four questions of importance in life: What is sacred, of what is the spirit made, what is worth living for, and what is worth dying for. The answer to all of them is the same. Only LOVE.” ― Umberto Eco 1 person liked it like “De mens bedrijft het kwaad nooit zo hartstochtig en vol overgave als wanneer hij dat doet uit godsdienstige overtuiging.” ― Umberto Eco tags: evil, godsdienst, religion 1 person liked it like

“Hoy en día no nos damos cuenta que la cualidad única de una obra de arte no hay que buscarla en una idea concebida por acto de gracia e independiente de la experiencia de la naturaleza: en el arte convergen todas nuestras experiencias vividas, elaboradas y resumidas según los normales procesos imaginativos, salvo que lo que hace única la obra es el modo en el que esta elaboración se vuelve concreta y se ofrece a la percepción, a través de un proceso de interacción entre experiencia vivida, voluntad de arte y legalidad autónoma del material sobre el que se trabaja.” ― Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages tags: arte, estética 1 person liked it like “What better hiding place for the true Templar than in the crowd of his caricatures?” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: templar 1 person liked it like “Man's principle trait is a readiness to believe anything” ― Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery 1 person liked it like “Heden ten dage verstaat men onder vrijheid echter de mogelijkheid om de geloofsovertuiging en de mening te kiezen die je het meest aanstaat en die allemaal inwisselbaar zijn - en het maakt de staat niet uit of je vrijmetselaar, christen, Jood of een volgeling van de Grote Turk bent. Zo wordt men onverschillig jegens de Waarheid.” ― Umberto Eco tags: de-begraafplaats-van-praag 1 person liked it like “Evet beyefendi, ben maymundan geliyorum. Ama siz ona doğru ilerliyorsunuz!” ― Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery 1 person liked it like “I discovered ... that a novel has nothing to do with words in the first instance. Writing a novel is a cosmological matter, like the story told by Genesis (we all have to choose our role models, as Woody Allen puts it).” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: cosmos, creation, writing 1 person liked it like “There, I said to myself, are the reasons for the silence and darkness that surround the library: it is the preserve of learning but can maintain this learning unsullied only if it prevents its reaching anyone at all, even the monks themselves. Learning is not like a coin, which remains whole even through the most infamous transactions; it is, rather, like a very handsome dress, which is worn out through use and ostentation. Is not a book like that, in fact?” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 1 person liked it like

“I was dozing, and the clock woke me. I didn’t hear the first few chimes distinctly, that is to say, I didn’t count them. But as soon as I decided to count I realized that there had already been three, so I was able to count four, five, and so on. I understood that I could say four and then wait for the fifth, because one, two, and three had passed, and I somehow knew that. If the fourth chime had been the first I was conscious of, I would have thought it was six o’clock. I think our lives are like that— you can only anticipate the future if you can call the past to mind. I can’t count the chimes of my life because I don’t know how many came before. On the other hand, I dozed off because the chair had been rocking for a while. And I dozed off in a certain moment because that moment had been preceded by other moments, and because I was relaxing while awaiting the subsequent moment. But if the first moments hadn’t put me in the right frame of mind, if I had begun rocking in any old moment, I wouldn’t have expected what had to come. I would have remained awake. You need memory even to fall asleep. Or no?” ― Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 1 person liked it like “Beware of faking: people will believe you. People believe those who sell lotions that make lost hair grow back. They sense instinctively that the salesman is putting together truths that don't go together, that he's not being logical, that he's not speaking in good faith. But they've been told that God is mysterious, unfathomable, so to them incoherence is the closest thing to God. The farfetched is the closest thing to miracle.” ― Umberto Eco tags: foucault-s-pendulum, umberto-eco 1 person liked it like “Atât de mare e puterea adevărului care, precum binele, se răspândește de la sine.” ― Umberto Eco, Numele trandafirului tags: good, power, truth 1 person liked it like “All the same,” I said, “when you read the prints in the snow and the evidence of the branches, you did not yet know Brunellus. In a certain sense those prints spoke of all horses, or at least all horses of that breed. Mustn’t we say, then, that the book of nature speaks to us only of essences, as many distinguished theologians teach?” “Not entirely, dear Adso,” my master replied. “True, that kind of print expressed to me, if you like, the idea of ‘horse,’ the verbum mentis, and would have expressed the same to me wherever I might have found it. But the print in that place and at that hour of the day told me that at least one of all possible horses had passed that way. So I found myself halfway between the perception of the concept ‘horse’ and the knowledge of an individu?al horse. And in any case, what I knew of the universal horse had been given me by those traces, which were singular. I could say I was caught at that moment between the singularity of the traces and my ignorance, which assumed the quite diaphanous form of a univer?sal idea. If you see something from a distance, and you do not understand what it is, you will be content with defining it as a body of some dimension. When you come closer, you will then define it as an animal, even if you do not yet know whether it is a horse or an ass. And finally, when it is still closer, you will be able to say it is a horse even if you do not yet know whether it is Brunellus or Niger. And only when you are at the proper distance will

you see that it is Brunellus (or, rather, that horse and not another, however you decide to call it). And that will be full knowledge, the learning of the singular. So an hour ago I could expect all horses, but not because of the vastness of my intellect, but because of the paucity of my deduction. And my intellect’s hunger was sated only when I saw the single horse that the monks were leading by the halter. Only then did I truly know that my previous reasoning, had brought me close to the truth. And so the ideas, which I was using earlier to imagine a horse I had not yet seen, were pure signs, as the hoofprints in the snow were signs of the idea of ‘horse’; and sins and the signs of signs are used only when we are lacing things.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

Umberto Eco quotes (showing 201-250 of 254)
“There must be a connection between the lust for power and impotentia coeundi. I liked Marx, I was sure that he and his Jenny had made love merrily. You can feel it in the easy pace of his prose and in his humor. On the other hand, I remember remarking one day in the corridors of the university that if you screwed Krupskaya all the time, you'd end up writing a lousy book like Materialism and Empiriocriticism.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: foucault-s-pendulum, lenin, umberto-eco 1 person liked it like “It's so beautiful.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 1 person liked it like “The monkish vows keep us far from that sink of vice that is the female body, but often they bring us close to other errors. Can I finally hide from myself the fact that even today my old age is still stirred by the noonday demon when my eyes, in choir, happen to linger on the beardless face of a novice, pure and fresh as a maiden's?” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: homosexuality, hypocrisy, lust, misogyny, monks, pedophilia, sin, vice 1 person liked it like “It seems that the Parisian Oulipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder-story situations and has found that there is still to be written a book in which the murderer is the reader. Moral: there exist obsessive ideas, they are never personal; books talk among themselves, and any true detection should prove that we are the guilty party.” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: detection, detective-stories, guilt, paradoxes, readership, responsibility, writing 1 person liked it like “Ще пуснеш ли вентилатора, animula vagula blandula? - Aма нали е зима? - За вас от погрешното полукълбо, миличка. Сега е юли. Имай търпение, пусни вентилатора не защото аз съм мъжът, а защото е от твоята страна.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 1 person liked it

like “Ампаро отстояваше твърдо своята вяра. "Няма значение какъв е емпиричният случай, казваше, става дума за един идеален принцип, който трябва да се изпробва при идеални условия, следователно никога. Но принципът е верен.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 1 person liked it like “Cartea a dovedit ce poate, și nu vedem un alt obiect mai bun pe care l-am putea crea pentru aceeași întrebuințare.” ― Umberto Eco, Non sperate di liberarvi dei libri tags: books 1 person liked it like “Art is a serious matter” ― Umberto Eco 1 person liked it like “By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something about the world.” ― Umberto Eco 1 person liked it like “Here's a book about gnomes, undines, salamanders, elves, sylphs, fairies, but it, too, brings in the origins of Aryan civilization. The SS, apparently, are descended from the Seven Dwarfs.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: fairies, gnomes, nazis, ss 1 person liked it like “La caca es lo más personal y reservado que tenemos. El resto pueden conocerlo todos, la expresión de tu cara, tu mirada, tus gestos (...) Los seres humanos aman el perfume de sus propios excrementos pero no el de los ajenos. En el fondo, forman parte de nuestro cuerpo” ― Umberto Eco 1 person liked it like “La desesperada soledad de las paralelas que no se encuentran jamás” ― Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 1 person liked it like “History is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error.” ― Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 1 person liked it like “Nothing can shake my belief that this world is the fruit of a dark god whose shadow I extend.” ― Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 1 person liked it like

“Çocukluk yıllarım boyunca, tanıştığım bütün insanların, kaderin bir oyunu olarak, ahmak olduğuna inanmıştım.” ― Umberto Eco, How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays 1 person liked it like “«Так что же, – осмелился я спросить, – вы еще далеки от решения?» «Я очень близок к решению, – ответил Вильгельм. – Только не знаю, к которому». «Значит, при решении вопросов вы не приходите к единственному верному ответу?» «Адсон, – сказал Вильгельм, – если бы я к нему приходил, я давно бы уже преподавал богословие в Париже». «В Париже всегда находят правильный ответ?» «Никогда, – сказал Вильгельм. – Но крепко держатся за свои ошибки».” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 1 person liked it like “How beautiful the world is, and how ugly labyrinths are,' I said, relieved. 'How beautiful the world would be if there was a procedure for moving through labyrinths,' my master replied.” ― Umberto Eco 1 person liked it like “Rzeczywiście, często się zdarza, że idzie się do biblioteki, bo chce się książkę o znanym tytule, ale główną funkcją biblioteki, a przynajmniej funkcją biblioteki w moim domu i w domach wszystkich znajomych, jakich możemy odwiedzać, jest odkrywanie książek, których istnienia się nie podejrzewało, a które, jak się okazuje, są dla nas niezwykle ważne.” ― Umberto Eco, O bibliotece tags: library, umberto-eco 1 person liked it like “Mas talvez naquele momento ele não tenha sido capaz de nenhum cálculo,o grito que lhe saiu da boca era o grito de sua alma e nele e com ele descarregava anos de longos e secretos remorsos.Ou seja,após uma vida de incertezas,entusiasmos e desilusões,vilezas e traições,posto diante da inelutabilidade de sua ruína,ele decidia professar a fé de sua juventude,sem mais perguntar se era justa ou errada,mas para mostrar a si mesmo que era capaz de alguma fé.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 1 person liked it like “In the years when I discoverd the Abbé Vallet volume, there was a widespread conviction that one should write only out of a commitment to the present, in order to change the world. Now, after ten years or more, the man of letters (restored to his

loftiest dignity) can happily write out of pure love of writing.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: writing 1 person liked it like “I was in a maze. No matter which way I turned, it was the wrong way.” ― Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 1 person liked it like “The faith a movement proclaims doesn't count: what counts is the hope it offers. All heresies are the banner of a reality, an exclusion. Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: exclusion, heresy, leprosy, poverty 1 person liked it like “Für die Leute, die einen zum ersten Mal besuchen, eine imposante Bibliothek entdecken und nichts Besseres zu sagen wissen als: "Haben Sie das alles gelesen?“, kenne ich mehrere Antworten. Einer meiner Freunde sagt; „Mehr, Monsieur, mehr." Ich für mein Teil habe zwei Antworten. Die erste ist: "Nein. Das sind nur die Bücher, die ich nächste Woche lesen muss. Die, die ich schon gelesen habe, sind in der Universität." Die zweite Antwort lautet: "Ich hab keins dieser Bücher gelesen. Warum würde ich sie sonst hier aufbewahren?” ― Umberto Eco, N'espérez pas vous débarrasser des livres tags: bibliohilie-bibliothek 1 person liked it like “-Es un hombre... extraño. -Es, o ha sido, en muchos aspectos, un gran hombre. Pero precisamente por eso es extraño. Sólo los hombres pequeños parecen normales.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 1 person liked it like “The belief that time is a linear, directed sequence running from A to B is a modern illusion. In fact, it can also go from B to A, the effect producing the cause.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: history, time 1 person liked it like “-Es inútil, ya no tenemos la sabiduría de los antiguos, ¡se acabó la época de los gigantes! -Somos enanos -admitió Guillermo-, pero enanos subidos a los hombros de aquellos gigantes, y, aunque pequeños, a veces logramos ver más allá de su horizonte.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 1 person liked it like “Pengetahuan Tuhan mewujud dalam pengetahuan manusia” ― Umberto Eco 1 person liked it like

“Über die deutsche Sprache: „Sie halten sich für tief, weil ihre Sprache unklar ist, ihr fehlt die clarté der französischen Sprache, sie sagt nie exakt das, was sie sollte, so dass kein Deutscher jemals weiß, was er sagen wollte – und dann verwechselt er diese Undeutlichkeit mit Tiefe. Es ist mit Deutschen wie mit Frauen, man gelangt bei ihnen nie auf den Grund” ― Umberto Eco, Il cimitero di Praga tags: german-language, languages 1 person liked it like “And in that moment I experience a revelation. I realize now that it was a painful sense that the world is purposeless, the lazy fruit of a misunderstanding, but in that moment I was able to translate what I felt only as: "God does not exist.” ― Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana tags: purpose-of-life 1 person liked it like “But this lump does not absolve me, because I got it through heedlessness, not though courage. I run my tongue over my lip and what do I do? I write. But bad literature brings no redemption.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: writing 1 person liked it like “L'essere umano è davvero una creatura straordinaria. Ha scoperto il fuoco, edificato città, scritto magnifiche poesie, dato interpretazioni del mondo, inventato mitologie etc... Ma allo stesso tempo non ha smesso di fare la guerra ai suoi simili, non ha smesso di ingannarsi, di distruggere l'ambiente circostante. La somma algebrica fra vigore intellettuale e coglioneria dà un risultato quasi nullo. Dunque, decidendo di parlare di imbecillità, rendiamo in un certo senso omaggio a questa creatura che è per metà geniale, per metà imbecille” ― Umberto Eco, Non sperate di liberarvi dei libri tags: essere-umano, genialità, genius, human-being, stupidity, stupidità 1 person liked it like “Το βιβλίο δεν είναι μόνο υπόθεση κουλτούρας. Είναι και υπόθεση πολιτικής αγωγής…” ― Umberto Eco tags: books 1 person liked it like “When a spy sells something entirely new, all he needs to do is recount something you could find in any second-hand book stall.” ― Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery tags: espionage 1 person liked it like “Книгата е крехко същество, което страда от разрухата на времето, страхува се от гризачи и непохватни ръце. Библиотекарят пази книгите не само от

човечеството, но също така и от природата и посвещава живота си на войната със силите на забвението” ― Umberto Eco 1 person liked it like “Con Cusano si delinea l'immagine di un universo infinitamente aperto che ha il centro dappertutto e la circonferenza in nessun luogo. Dio, in quanto infinito, supera ogni limitazione e ogni opposizione. A mano a mano che si aumenta il diametro di un cerchio, diminuisce la sua curvatura, e al limite una circonferenza infinita diventa una retta infinita: in Dio si ha la coincidenza degli opposti. Se l'universo avesse un centro, sarebbe limitato da un altro universo. Ma nell'universo Dio è centro e circonferenza. La terra non può essere il centro dell'universo.” ― Umberto Eco 1 person liked it like “Jangan percaya begitu saja pada apa yang disebut sebagai sejarah” ― Umberto Eco 1 person liked it like “We'll have to consult Aglie. I doubt that even he knows all these organizations." "Want to bet? They're his daily bread. But we can put him to the test. Let's add a sect that doesn't exist. Founded recently." I recalled the curious question of De Angelis, whether I had ever heard of the Tres. And I said: "Tres." "What's that?" Belbo asked. "If it's an acrostic, there has to be a subtext," Diotallevi said. "Otherwise my rabbis would not have been able to use the notarikon. Lets see... Templi Resurgentes Equites Synarchici. That suit you?" We liked the name, and put it at the bottom of the list. "With all these conventicles, inventing one more was no mean trick," Diotallevi said in a sudden fit of vanity.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 1 person liked it like “I was becoming addicted, Diotallevi was becoming corrupted, Belbo was becoming converted. But all of us were slowly losing that intellectual light that allows you always to tell the similar from the identical, the metaphorical from the real.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 1 person liked it like “Characters migrate” ― Umberto Eco 1 person liked it like

“Jacopo, while I could still read, during these past months, I read dictionaries, I studied histories of words, to understand what was happening in my body. I studied like a rabbi. Have you ever reflected that the linguistic term `metathesis' is similar to the oncological term `metastasis'? What is the metathesis? Instead of `clasp' one says `claps.' Instead of `beloved' one says `bevoled.' It's the temurah. The dictionary says that metathesis means the transposition or interchange, while metastasis indicates the change and shifting. How stupid dictionaries are! The root is the same. Either it's the verb metatithemi or the verb methistemi. Metatithemi means I interpose, I shift, I transfer, I substitute, I abrogate a law, I change a meaning. And methistemi? It's the same thing: I move, I transform, I transpose, I switch cliches, I take leave of my senses. And as we sought secret meanings beyond the letter, we all took leave of our senses. And so did my cells, obediently, dutifully. That's why I'm dying, Jacopo, and you know it.” ― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum tags: words 1 person liked it like “Born as the raising to the nth power of that initial (and rational) waste that is sports recreation, sports chatter is the glorification of Waste, and therefore the maximum point of Consumption. On it and in it the consumer civilization man actually consumes himself (and every possibility of thematizing and judging the enforced consumption to which his is invited and subjected).” ― Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality 1 person liked it like “What model reader did I want as i was writing? An accomplice, to be sure, one who would play my game.” ― Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose tags: writing 1 person liked it like “And this? Aldhelm of Malmesbury. Listen to this page: 'Primitus pantorum procerum poematorum pio potissimum paternoque presertim privilegio panegiricum poemataque passim prosatori sub polo promulgatas.' ... The words all begin with the same letter!" "The men of my islands are all a bit mad," William said proudly.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: alliteration, humor 1 person liked it like “« Les hommes ne font jamais le mal aussi complètement et ardemment que lorsqu'ils le font par conviction religieuse. » (p. 26)” ― Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery 1 person liked it like “Will we be happier afterwards? Or will be have lost the freshness of those who are privileged to experience art as real life, where we enter after the trumps have been played, and we leave without knowing who's going to win or lose the game?” ― Umberto Eco, How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays

1 person liked it like “Omnia mundi creatura quasi liber et pictura nobis est in speculum.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: philosophical 1 person liked it like “But is the unicorn a falsehood? It's the sweetest of animals and a noble symbol. It stands for Christ and for chastity; it can be captured only by setting a virgin in the forest, so that the animal, catching her most chaste odor, will go and lay its head in her lap, offering itself as prey to the hunters' snares." "So it is said, Adso. But many tend to believe that it's a fable, an invention of the pagans." "What a disappointment," I said. "I would have liked to encounter one, crossing a wood. Otherwise what's the pleasure of crossing a wood?” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose tags: christianity, fables, mythology, religion, symbolism, unicorns 1 person liked it like “Повтарят, че тяхното царство не е на този свят, а слагат ръка на всичко, до което могат да се докопат. Никога цивилизацията няма да достигне съвършенство, докато последният камък от последната църква не падне върху последния свещеник и земята не се отърве от тази сган" ("Пражкото гробище")” ― Umberto Eco 1 person liked it like “...I am not I who thinks,but I am the Void, or extension, that thinks me. And so this composite is an accident, in which Void and extension linger for the blink of an eye, to be able afterwards to return to thinking otherwise. In this great Void of the Void, the one thing that truly is, is the history of this evolution in numberless transitory compositions...Compositions of what? Of the one great Nothingness, which is the substance of the whole. Substance governed by a majestic necessity, which leads it to create and destroy worlds, to weave our pale lives. I must accept this, succeed in loving this Necessity, return to it, and bow to its future will, for this is the condition of Happiness. Only by accepting its law will I find my freedom. To flow back into It will be Salvation, fleeing from passions into the sole passion, the Intellectual Love of God. If I truly succeeded in understanding this, I would be the one man who has found the True Philosophy, and I would know everything about the God that is hidden. But who would have the heart to go about the world and proclaim such a philosophy? This is the secret I will carry with me to my grave, in the Antipodes.” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before 1 person liked it

like “Ok now--I don't read "all the time." Remember, that these ratings are over quite a while. I'll try to put in some comments over what I've been reading lately. I like Vince Flynn's spy/thrillers. Also, check out Umberto Eco's one "On Beauty"--not the precise title, but great art/comments. Also, Sophie's World if you like a pretty unusual story with philosophy mixed in.” ― Umberto Eco Get quotes daily Join Goodreads

Umberto Eco > Quotes
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Umberto Eco quotes (showing 251-254 of 254)
“...we never cease hoping--and thus did our Judge condemn us to suffer in saecula.' Ferrante asked: 'But what is it that you hope for?' You might as well ask what you will hope for yourself. ...You will hope that a wisp of wind, the slightest swell of the tide, the arrival of a single hungry leech, can return us, atom by atom, to the great Void of the Universe, where we would somehow again participate in the cycle of life.” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before 1 person liked it like “Mais l idéologie proclamée de Forest Lawn est la même que celle du musée Getty qui est gratuitement ouvert au public. C est l idéologie de la conservation, au Nouveau Monde, des trésors que l imprévoyance et le désintérêt du Vieux Monde sont en train de réduire a néant. Naturellement cette ideologie occulte quelque chose: le desir du profit, dans le cas du cimetiere, et, dans le cas de Getty, le fait que la colonisation affairiste du Nouveau Monde (dont fait partie aussi l empire petrolier de Paul Getty) a affaibli le le Vieux. Cest exactement les larmes de crocodile du patricien romain qui reproduisait les grandeurs de cette Grece que son pays avait rabaissee au rang de colonie.” ― Umberto Eco, La Guerre du faux 1 person liked it like “Was der Unselige nicht weiß, ist, dass die Bibliothek nicht nur ein Ort der Erinnerung ist, wo wir aufbewahren, was wir gelesen haben, sondern der Ort des universalen Gedächtnisses, wo wir eines Tages, im schicksalhaften Moment, auch das finden können, was andere vor uns gelesen haben.” ― Umberto Eco, Die Kunst des Bücherliebens tags: bibliophily 0 people liked it like

“Je récapitule. Entrez dans une salle de ciné : si pour aller de A à B, les protagonistes mettent plus de temps que vous ne le souhaiteriez, alors c'est un film porno.” ― Umberto Eco, Pastiches et Postiches