X

Sort by

Quote length

Sentiment

Change font

Change background

Literary Critic Inspirational Quotes (30152)

Page 6 of 1257
Filter & Style
Image
For every action, there's an infinity of outcomes. Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers - and one comes true.
China Mieville
Image
Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.
Barbara Johnson
Image
How little inventiveness there is in man, Grave copier of copies.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Whatever doubts or vexations one has in Japan, it is only necessary to ask one's self: Well, who are the best people to live with?
Lafcadio Hearn
Image
I grew up amongst biologists.
Margaret Atwood
Image
Cosmetics is the science of a woman's cosmos.
Karl Kraus
Image
Sexual enlightenment is that hardhearted process which for hygienic reasons forbids young people to satisfy their curiosity themselves.
Karl Kraus
Image
Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.
E. M. Forster
Image
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
Image
It was awkward, revisiting a world you have never seen before: like coming home, after a long journey, to someone else’s house.
Umberto Eco
Image
There are more books in the world than hours in which to read them. We are thus deeply influenced by books we haven't read, that we haven't had the time to read.
Umberto Eco
Image
The problem with the Internet is that it gives you everything - reliable material and crazy material. So the problem becomes, how do you discriminate?
Umberto Eco
Image
The court jester had the right to say the most outrageous things to the king. Everything was permitted during carnival, even the songs that the Roman legionnaires would sing, calling Julius Caesar queen, alluding, in a very transparent way, to his real, or presumed, homosexual escapades.
Umberto Eco
Image
What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?
Umberto Eco
Image
I felt like poisoning a monk.
Umberto Eco
Image
I seem to know all the cliches, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely because all the cliches intertwine in an unrealistic way and you can't disentangle them. But when you actually live a cliche, it feels brand new, and you are unashamed.
Umberto Eco
Image
The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon... The book has been thoroughly tested, and it's very hard to see how it could be improved on for its current purposes.
Umberto Eco
Image
The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.
Umberto Eco
Image
Sometimes you say things with a smile with the precise intention of making it clear that you are not being serious, and are only kidding. If I salute a friend with a smile and say, How are you, you old scoundrel! clearly I don't really mean he's a scoundrel.
Umberto Eco
Image
Religion has nothing to do with God. It's a fundamental attitude of human beings, who ask about the origins of life and what happens after death. For many, the answer is a personal god. In my opinion, it's religion that produces God, not the other way round.
Umberto Eco
Image
Someone tells me: this kind of love is not viable. But how can you evaluate viability? Why is the viable a Good Thing? Why is it better to last than to burn?
Roland Barthes
Image
When the writer (or the artist in general) says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules.
Umberto Eco
Image
Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow.
Umberto Eco
Image
In the Middle Ages, cathendrals and convents burned like tinder imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a World War II movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in flames.
Umberto Eco
Previous
Next