-
You die, but most of what you have accumulated will not be lost; you are leaving a message in a bottle.
Umberto Eco -
The most interesting letters I received about 'The Name of the Rose' were from people in the Midwest that maybe didn't understand exactly, but wanted to understand more and who were excited by this picture of a world which was not their own.
Umberto Eco
-
Followers of the occult believe in only what they already know, and in those things that confirm what they have already learned.
Umberto Eco -
To play the trumpet, you must train your lips for a long time. When I was twelve or thirteen I was a good player, but I lost the skill and now I play very badly. I do it every day even so. The reason is that I want to return to my childhood. For me, the trumpet is evidence of the sort of young man I was.
Umberto Eco -
The mobile phone... is a tool for those whose professions require a fast response, such as doctors or plumbers.
Umberto Eco -
We invented the car, and it made it easier for us to crash and die. If I gave a car to my grandfather, he would die in five minutes, while I have grown up slowly to accept speed.
Umberto Eco -
I think a book should be judged 10 years later, after reading and re-reading it.
Umberto Eco -
My father was an accountant and his father was a typographer.
Umberto Eco
-
A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.
Umberto Eco -
The United States needed a civil war to unite properly.
Umberto Eco -
Ugliness is more inventive than beauty. Beauty always follows certain camps. I think it's more amusing - ugliness - than beauty.
Umberto Eco -
After all, the cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopaedia.
Umberto Eco -
Beauty is boring because it is predictable.
Umberto Eco -
How does a person feel when looking at the sky? He thinks that he doesn't have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopping describing the sky, simply listing what they see.
Umberto Eco
-
If somebody writes a book and doesn't care for the survival of that book, he's an imbecile.
Umberto Eco -
Entering 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 -
If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot.
Umberto Eco -
History is rich with adventurous men, long on charisma, with a highly developed instinct for their own interests, who have pursued personal power - bypassing parliaments and constitutions, distributing favours to their minions, and conflating their own desires with the interests of the community.
Umberto Eco -
There are books on our shelves we haven't read and doubtless never will, that each of us has probably put to one side in the belief that we will read them later on, perhaps even in another life.
Umberto Eco -
Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.
Umberto Eco
-
"You cannot believe what you are saying." "Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal letters for an ideal nymph, only to plumb with his words the depths of passion. The philosopher tests the coldness of his gaze, to see how far he can undermine the fortress of bigotry."
Umberto Eco -
We like lists because we don't want to die.
Umberto Eco -
Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
Umberto Eco -
Many people who no longer go to church end up falling prey to superstition.
Umberto Eco