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As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.

Elias Canetti

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Elias Canetti
Age: 89 †
Born: 1905
Born: July 25
Died: 1994
Died: August 14
Aphorist
Author
Chemist
Essayist
Novelist
Playwright
Writer
Rousse
Elías Canetti
Person
Might
Good
Capability
Goodness
Capable
Literature
Doesn
Persons

More quotes by Elias Canetti

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Words are not too old, only people are too old if they use the same words too frequently.
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All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.
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A 'modern' man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.
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Travelling, one accepts everything indignation stays at home. One looks, one listens, one is roused to enthusiasm by the most dreadful things because they are new. Good travellers are heartless.
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He would like to start from scratch. Where is scratch?
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...how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?
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The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure.
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Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.
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His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations.
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One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.
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Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster.
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The self- explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. He learns to see himself, but suddenly, provided he was honest, all the rest appears, and it is as rich as he was, and, as a final crowning, richer.
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Of all the words in all languages I know, the greatest concentration is in the English word I.
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Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.
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Speak as though it were the last sentence allowed you.
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Learning is the art of ignoring.
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Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.
Elias Canetti
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The act of naming is the great and solemn consolation of mankind
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History portrays everything as if it could not have come otherwise. History is on the side of what happened.
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I try to imagine someone saying to Shakespeare, 'Relax!
Elias Canetti