Elias Canetti Quotes

Austria, Author
July 25, 1905 – August, 14, 1994.

Elias Canetti (25 July 1905 – 14 August 1994) was a German-language author, born in Ruse, Bulgaria to a merchant family. They moved to Manchester, England, but his father died in 1912, and his mother took her three sons back to the continent. They settled in Vienna.

Also known as Novelist

One who obeys himself suffocates as surely as one who obeys others.

Elias Canetti
You need the rhetoric of others, the aversion it inspires, in order to find the way out of your own.

Elias Canetti

The once-seen does not exist yet. The always seen no longer exists.

Elias Canetti
I can’t be twenty-two again. I can’t subject myself to the same compulsion that, at the time, appeared to me as freedom and gave me wings.

Elias Canetti
- Time
- Freedom
The story of your youth must not turn into a catalog of what became important in your later life. It must also contain the dissipation, the failure, and the waste.

Elias Canetti
- Life
- Important
- Failure
Alles, was man vergessen hat, schreit im Traum um Hilfe.

Elias Canetti
His great holy books, which he does not know. They are so holy that he does not dare to open them.

Elias Canetti
- Great
He sometimes tells himself that there is nothing more to be said, simply because he won’t get around to saying it.-How contemptible!

Elias Canetti

You don’t have to know a philosopher’s every syllable to know why he rubs you the wrong way. You may know it best after a few of his sentences, and les and less well after that. The important thing is to see his web and move away before you tear it.

Elias Canetti
- Important
- Why
- May
Everything you rejected and pushed aside-take it up again.

Elias Canetti
- Up
Er erweist dem Tod nicht die Ehre.

Elias Canetti
- Die