"Until then I had thought each book spoke……" — Umberto Eco
"Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treausre of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors."
—
Umberto Eco
★
★
★
★
★
0.0 avg (0 ratings)
275 Quotes by Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco has 275 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
-
Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message.
-
The Art of the Romance, though warning us that it is providing fictions, opens a door into the Palace of…
-
In the construction of Immortal Fame you need first of all a cosmic shamelessness.
-
If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third…
-
The pleasures of love are pains that become desirable, where sweetness and torment blend, and so love is voluntary insanity,…
-
The ideology of this America wants to establish reassurance through Imitation. But profit defeats ideology, because the consumers want to…
-
The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its…
-
Every great thinker is someone else's moron.
-
When all the archetypes burst out shamelessly, we plumb the depths of Homeric profundity. Two clichés make us laugh but…
-
There are two kinds of friendship: one is genuine affection, the other is inability to refuse.
-
American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100oC
-
There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated…
See all 275 quotes by Umberto Eco »
More All Quotes
This quote is filed under All Quotes,
one of 128,558 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
-
Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally…
— Hannah Arendt
-
No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our…
— Hannah Arendt
-
The ultimate end of human acts is eudaimonia, happiness in the sense of living well, which all men desire; all…
— Hannah Arendt
-
The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes…
— Hannah Arendt
-
Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of…
— Hannah Arendt
-
We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and…
— Hannah Arendt
-
I keep my friends as misers do their treasure, because, of all the things granted us by wisdom, none is…
— Pietro Aretino
-
We must all make peace so that we can all live in peace.
— Jean-Bertrand Aristide
-
The spirit of Ubuntu, that once led Haiti to emerge as the first independent black nation in 1804, helped Venezuela,…
— Jean-Bertrand Aristide
-
As we all know, many people remain buried under tons of rubble and debris, waiting to be rescued. When we…
— Jean-Bertrand Aristide
-
Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.
— Aristophanes
-
A friend to all is a friend to none.
— Aristotle
See all 128,558 All Quotes »