Quotes from Umberto Eco

Cu cât îmb?trânesc, cu atât m? las mai mult în voia lui Dumnezeu, ÅŸi preÅ£uiesc tot mai puÅ£in inteligenÅ£a care vrea s? ÅŸtie ÅŸi voinÅ£a care vrea s? fac?; ÅŸi recunosc ca singur? cale spre mântuire credinÅ£a, care ÅŸtie s? aÅŸtepte cu r?bdare, f?r? s? întrebe prea mult.

often the step between ecstatic vision and sinful frenzy is very brief

I could write the political history of those years based on how Red Label gradually gave way to twelve-year-old Ballantine and then to single malt.

At times this can be so. Often books speak of other books. Often a harmless book is like a seed that will blossom into a dangerous book, or it is the other way around: it is the sweet fruit of a bitter stem. In reading Albert, couldn't I learn what Thomas might have said? Or in reading Thomas, know what Averroës said?

It is not intuitive why all this is intuitive.

William snapped, 'Drop it; we're looking for a Greek book!' 'This?' I asked, showing him a work whose pages were covered with abstruse letters. And William said, 'No, that's Arabic, idiot! Bacon was right: the scholar's first duty is to learn languages!' 'But you don't know Arabic, either!' I replied, irked, to which William answered, 'At least I understand when it IS Arabic!

Pero cuando Diotallevi y yo pensamos en construir un ars oblivionalis no pudimos descubrir las reglas del olvido. Es inútil: podemos ir en busca del tiempo perdido siguiendo exiguas huellas en el bosque, como Pulgarcito, pero somos incapaces de extraviar deliberadamente el tiempo reencontrado.

It would be atrocious," I said, "to kill a man in order to say bu-ba-baff!

He is the one who taught how to distinguish contradictions in order to mediate them harmoniously. Once the trick was clear, they thought that Thomas's lesson was this: Where yes and no are opposed, create a "nes.

I'd never understood whether the vogue for apologising is a sign of humility of impudence: you do something you shouldn't have done, then you apologise and wash your hands of it.

La tragedia del suicida consiste en que nada más saltar por la ventana, entre el séptimo y el sexto piso, se arrepiente: «¡Oh, si pudiese volver atrás!»

Es un círculo diabólico en el que el contestatario potencia aquello que cree destruir.

Let us forget for a moment that some of these false tales produced positive effects, while others produced horror and shame. All created something, for better or worse. Nothing in their success is inexplicable. What represents a problem is rather the way they managed to replace other tales that today we consider true.

For what I was to see at the abbey would make me think that it is often inquisitors who create heretics.

Si Dieu existait, il serait une bibliothèque.

Sería atroz —comentó Guillermo— matar a un hombre para decir Credo in unum Deum…

as everything moved—earth, solar system, nebulae and black holes, all the children of the great cosmic expansion—one single point stood still: a pivot, bolt, or hook around which the universe could move.

Binele unei c?rÅ£i const? în a fi citit?. O carte este f?cut? din semne, care vorbesc de alte semne, carele, la rândul lor, vorbesc despre lucruri. F?r? un ochi care s? le citeasc?, o carte poart? semne care nu produc concepte, ÅŸi deci mut?.

l'Anticristo è veramente vicino perché nessuna sapienza gli farà più da barriera.

Tudo é veneno, se tomado em doses exageradas, até o vinho.

Ya te he dicho que el límite entre el veneno y la medicina es bastante tenue, los griegos usaban la misma palabra, pharmacon, para referirse a los dos.

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?

Qué hermoso era el espectáculo de la naturaleza aún no tocada por el saber, a menudo perverso, del hombre! Vi

se dá excessivo relevo ao aspecto físico, esquecendo que o mal, quando irrompe, muito provavelmente tem origens psíquicas. E, se tem origens psíquicas, é a psique que devemos tratar, não o corpo.