Quotes from Elias Canetti

Ahlak?n bahts?zl??? : her ÅŸeyi daha iyi bilmesi ve bu yüzden de hiçbir ÅŸey öÄŸrenememesi.

The Englishman likes to imagine himself at sea, the German in a forest. It is impossible to express the difference of their national feeling more concisely.

It is not, however, only the word, it is also the thing, in all its infinite complexity, that he [Kafka] articulates with unrivaled courage and clarity. For, since he fears power in any form, since the real aim of his life is to withdraw from it, in whatever form it may appear, he detects it, identifies it, names it, and creates figures of it in every instance where others would accept it as being nothing out of the ordinary.

One needs time to free oneself of wrong convictions. If it happens too suddenly, they go on festering.

The fingers of the attacker feel what will soon belong to his whole body.

The touch to which one resigns oneself because all resistance appears hopeless – and particularly so as regards the future – has, in our society, become the arrest . The feel of the hand of authority on his shoulder is usually enough to make a man give himself up without having to be actually seized. He cowers and goes quietly.

At home in the nursery, I usually played alone. Actually, I seldom played, I spoke to the wallpaper. The many dark circles in the pattern of the wallpaper seemed like people to me. I made up stories in which they appeared, either I told them the stories or they played with me, I never got tired of the wallpaper people and I could talk to them for hours.

People sit together, bare their teeth and eat and, even in this critical moment, feel no desire to eat each other. They respect themselves for this, and respect their companions for an abstemiousness equal to their own.

Gli occhi molto belli sono insostenibili, bisogna guardarli sempre, ci si affoga dentro, ci si perde, non si sa più dove si è

The family becomes rigid and hard when it excludes others from its meals; those that must be fed provide a natural pretext for the exclusion of others. The hollowness of this pretext is revealed by families which have no children and yet make not the slightest move to share their meal with others. The 'family' of two is man's most contemptible creation.

A human being who falls down reminds us of an animal we might have hunted and brought down ourselves. Every sudden fall which arouses laughter does so because it suggests helplessness and reminds us that the fallen can, if we want, be treated as prey. If we went further and actually ate it, we would not laugh. We laugh instead of eating it. Laughter is our physical reaction to the escape of potential food.

Those most beset by commands are children. It is a miracle that they ever survive the pressure and do not collapse under the burden of the commands laid on them by their parents and teachers. That they in turn, and in equally cruel form, should give identical commands to their children is as natural as mastication or speech.

The hallucinations of alcoholics provide us with an opportunity to study crowds as they appear in the minds of individuals.

I've nothing, am nothing, shall be nothing, and yet I take nothing.

What is it that happens in an inflation? The unit of money suddenly loses its identity. The crowd it is part of starts growing and, the larger it becomes, the smaller becomes the worth of each unit. The millions one always wanted are suddenly there in one's hand, but they are no longer millions in fact, but only in name.

Ich sah verwundert, wie bescheiden, ja wie kümmerlich meine Wißbegier war, verglichen mit der eines solchen Mannes (...)

All'interno della massa domina l'uguaglianza. Essa è assoluta e indiscutibile, e non è mai posta in questione dalla massa stessa.

La massa ha bisogno di una direzione. Essa è in movimento e muove verso qualcosa. La direzione comune a tutti gli appartenenti rinforza la sensazione di eguaglianza.

La morte quale minaccia è la moneta del potere. Qui è facile mettere una moneta sull'altra e accumulare enormi capitali. Chi vuole riuscire ad aggredire il potere deve guardare negli occhi senza timore il comando e trovare i mezzi per sottrargli la sua spina.

Se muere con demasiada facilidad. Morir debería ser mucho más difícil. PDH

Almost Kien was tempted to believe in happiness, that contemptible life-goal of illiterates. If it came of itself, without being hunted for, if you did not hold it fast by force and treated it with a certain condescension, it was permissible to endure its presence for a few days.

Abbandonarsi ai propri pensieri per un'ora, ogni giorno, senza scopo: basta questo per rimanere qualcosa che somigli a un uomo

Najbol?a definicija zavi?aja jeste biblioteka.

Romani su klinovi koje neki glumac što piše zabija u ?vrstu li?nost svojih ?italaca. Što bol?e prora?una klin i otpor, to ?e ta li?nost ostati raspolu?enija. Trebalo bi da država zabrani romane.