Quotes from Umberto Eco

We don't see them, but, invisible, they act all around us.

If God existed, he would be a library.

religion is or has sometimes been the opium of the people, more often than not it has been its cocaine.

Chi non legge, a 70 anni avrà vissuto una sola vita. Chi legge avrà vissuto 5000 anni. A lettura è una immortalità all'indietro.

Pentru a supravie?ui, trebuie s? spunem pove?ti.

it is always better when the person who frightens us is also afraid of us.

Bacon was right in saying that the conquest of learning is achieved through the knowledge of languages.

Um Humanwissenschaften zu betreiben, genügt es nicht, Kriminalromane zu lesen, als ob sie Parmenides wären, man muß auch Parmenides lesen, als ob er ein Kriminalroman wäre.

Cartea a dovedit ce poate, È™i nu vedem un alt obiect mai bun pe care l-am putea crea pentru aceeaÈ™i întrebuinÈ›are.

a complicit mustiness hung in the air, the odour of silence and calm.

and I saw that it is one thing for a crowd, in an almost ecstatic frenzy, mistaking the laws of the devil for those of the Lord, to commit a massacre, but it is another thing for an individual to commit a crime in cold blood, with calculation, in silence.

By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something about the world.

as Boethius says, nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn; and what would be the point of saying today that the abbot Abo had a stern eye and pale cheeks, when by now he and those around him are dust and their bodies have the mortal grayness of dust (only their souls, God grant, shining with a light that will never be extinguished)?

You spend a life seeking the Opportunity, without realizing that the decisive moment, the moment that justifies birth and death, has already passed. It will not return, but it was - full, dazzling, generous as every revelation.

The German lives in a state of perpetual intestinal embarrassment due to an excess of beer and the pork sausages on which he gorges himself.

If the book is yours and it does not have antiquarian value, do not hesitate to annotate it. Do not trust those who say that you must respect books. You respect books by using them, not leaving them alone. Even if the book is unmarked, you won't make much money reselling it to a bookseller, so you may as well leave traces of your ownership.

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.

Y cuando vives cultivando esperanzas imposibles, ya eres un perdedor. Y cuando te das cuenta, te hundes.

I'd lost all faith in everything, except for the certainty that there's always someone behind our backs waiting to deceive us.

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb. This

It is certainly human to make mistakes, but there are some human beings who make more than others, and they are called fools.

Nothing more closely resembles a monastery (lost in the countryside, walled, flanked by alien, barbarian hordes, inhabited by monks who have nothing to do with the world and devote themselves to their private researches) than an American university campus.

As the Chinese said, to curse someone: "May you live in an interesting period.

Çocukluk y?llar?m boyunca, tan??t???m bütün insanlar?n, kaderin bir oyunu olarak, ahmak olduÄŸuna inanm??t?m.