Umberto EcoWhen men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ✨ Umberto Eco (2007). Foucault's Pendulum, p.615, Houghton Mifflin Ha… ▶371Reflection
Umberto EcoThe 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… ▶372Truth
Umberto EcoThe book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon... The book has been thoroug… ▶373Reading
Umberto EcoAs an adolescent I wrote comic books, because I read lots of them, and fantasy novels set in Malaysia and Central Africa. ✨ Umberto Eco, The Art of Fiction No. 197. Intervie… ▶373Reading
Umberto EcoBut Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangel… ▶351HumanityReadingTruth
Umberto EcoEach 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 (2007). … ▶374ThoughtTime
Umberto EcoA transposable aphorism is a malaise of the urge to be witty, or in other words, a maxim that is untroubled by the fact that the opposite of what it says is equally true so long a… ▶352HumorReadingTruth
Umberto EcoFrom lies to forgeries the step is not so long, and I have written technical essays on the logic of forgeries and on the influence of forgeries on history. ✨ Umberto Eco: &#… ▶341Humanity
Umberto EcoWith all of its defects, the global market makes war less likely, even between the USA and China. ✨ Umberto Eco: 'It's culture, not war, that cements European iden… ▶341Time
Umberto EcoThe 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… ▶374ThoughtTime
Umberto EcoAmerican coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100oC ✨ Umberto Eco (1995). How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt331Thought
Umberto EcoThe pleasures of love are pains that become desirable, where sweetness and torment blend, and so love is voluntary insanity, infernal paradise, and celestial hell - in short, harm… ▶364HumorLoveReading
Umberto EcoA 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 fo… ▶342LoveReading
Umberto EcoI started to work in television for three or four years, in 1954. There was one channel of television, black and white. But it could be entertaining and educational. During the ev… ▶331Death
Umberto EcoLibraries can take the place of God.353Reflection
Umberto EcoThe Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where… ▶353HopeTruth
Umberto EcoWe live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay. ✨ Umberto Eco (2014). The Name of the Rose, p.120, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt343Reading
Umberto EcoSomeone 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 o… ▶354Death
Umberto EcoThis, 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 (1995… ▶332PoliticsThoughtTruth
Umberto EcoThus 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 hopi… ▶354Humor
Umberto EcoIf western culture is shown to be rich it is because, even before the Enlightenment, it has tried to dissolve harmful simplifications through inquiry and the critical mind. … ▶354Thought
Umberto EcoDoes the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus' psychology was deduced by Aeschy… ▶343PoliticsReading
Umberto EcoThere is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as… ▶366DeathHopePhilosophy
Umberto EcoIs it worth it to be born if you cannot remember it later? And, technically speaking, had I ever been born? Other people, of course, said that I was. As far as I know, I was born … ▶344HumanityReading
Umberto EcoWhat 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 exi… ▶322Love
Umberto EcoUntil 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 … ▶366DeathHumanityLife
Umberto EcoEntering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: You have to learn the rhythms of respiration - acquire the pace. Otherwise you stop right away. ✨ Umberto Eco (20… ▶344Reading
Umberto EcoI think of myself as a serious professor who, during the weekend, writes novels.377ReadingThought
Umberto EcoFollowers of the occult believe in only what they already know, and in those things that confirm what they have already learned. ✨ Umberto Eco (2012). Inventing the Enemy an… ▶311Reading
Umberto EcoI think every professor and writer is in some way an exhibitionist because his or her normal activity is a theatrical one. When you give a lesson the situation is the same as writ… ▶377DeathReadingThought
