Quotes from Umberto Eco

Çfarë është dashuria? Nuk ka asgjë në botë qoftë humane apo djallëzore apo çfarëdoqoftë që mund të deportojë në shpirtin e njeriut si dashuria

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?

But chance has a taste for conspiracy.

Not that the incredulous person doesn't believe in anything. It's just that he doesn't believe in everything. Or he believes in one thing at a time. He believes a second thing only if it somehow follows from the first thing. He is nearsighted and methodical, avoiding wide horizons. If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that's credulity.

The conspiracy theory of society . . . comes from abandoning God and then asking: "Who is in his place?" —Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, London, Routledge

Rather, they prove that students can make something out of their education.

De mens bedrijft het kwaad nooit zo hartstochtig en vol overgave als wanneer hij dat doet uit godsdienstige overtuiging.

Can you call yourself a coward simply because the courage of others seems to you out of proportion to the triviality of the occasion?

Oggi i libri sono i nostri vecchi. Non ce ne rendiamo conto, ma la nostra ricchezza rispetto all'analfabeta (o di chi, alfabeto, non legge) è che lui sta vivendo e vivrà solo la sua vita e noi ne abbiamo vissute moltissime.

Tüm a??klar gibi Baudlino da kibirli olmuÅŸtu.

Evet beyefendi, ben maymundan geliyorum. Ama siz ona doÄŸru ilerliyorsunuz!

I lost myself in the contemplation of nature, trying to forget my thoughts and to look only at beings as they appear, and to forget myself, joyfully, in the sight of them.

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 sequentur. grasp the words, and the subject will follow.

I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer is not aware of.

Every thing thinks, but according to its complexity. If this is so, then stones also think...and this stone thinks only I stone, I stone, I stone. But perhaps it cannot even say I. It thinks: Stone, stone, stone... God enjoys being All, as this stone enjoys being almost nothing, but since it knows no other way of being, it is pleased with its own way, eternally satisfied with itself.

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.

interested in everything and nothing else

If the eye could see the demons that people the universe, existence would be impossible. —Talmud, Berakhot, 6

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.

Our cause is a secret within a secret, a secret that only another secret can explain; it is a secret about a secret that is veiled by a secret. —Jafar as-?diq, sixth Imam

when your true enemies are too strong, you have to choose weaker enemies. I reflected that this is why the simple are so called. Only the powerful always know with great clarity who their true enemies are.

A daily newspaper is destined to become like a weekly magazine. We'll be talking about what might happen tomorrow, with feature articles, investigative supplements, unexpected predictions...

That man is … odd," I dared say to William. "He is, or has been, in many ways a great man. But for this very reason he is odd. It is only petty men who seem normal. Ubertino

When all the archetypes burst out shamelessly, we plumb Homeric profundity. Two clichés make us laugh but a hundred clichés move us because we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion.