Quote

The universe is the mirror in which we can contemplate only what we have learned to know in ourselves

Italo Calvino

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Italo Calvino
Age: 62 †
Born: 1923
Born: January 15
Died: 1985
Died: September 19
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Santiago de Compostela de las Vegas
Italo Giovanni Calvino Mameli
Italo Giovanni Calvino
Contemplate
Contemplating
Mirror
Mirrors
Learned
Universe

More quotes by Italo Calvino

Image
Knowledge of the world means dissolving the solidity of the world.
Italo Calvino
Image
It is only after you have come to know the surface of things ... that you can venture to seek what is underneath. But the surface of things is inexhaustible.
Italo Calvino
Image
At times the mirror increases a thing’s value, at times denies it.
Italo Calvino
Image
Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.
Italo Calvino
Image
There is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics. I would say that such a library ought to be composed half of books we have read and that have really counted for us, and half of books we propose to read and presume will come to count—leaving a section of empty shelves for surprises and occasional discoveries
Italo Calvino
Image
What harbor can receive you more securely than a great library?
Italo Calvino
Image
In politics, as in every other sphere of life, there are two important principles for a man of any sense: don't cherish too many illusions, and never stop believing that every little bit helps.
Italo Calvino
Image
The soul is often in the surface, and the importance of 'depth' is overestimated.
Italo Calvino
Image
The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written.
Italo Calvino
Image
Renouncing things is less difficult than people believe: it's all a matter of getting started. Once you've succeeded in dispensing with something you thought essential, you realize you can also do without something else, then without many other things.
Italo Calvino
Image
The city of cats and the city of men exist one inside the other, but they are not the same city.
Italo Calvino
Image
There is no language without deceit.
Italo Calvino
Image
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
Italo Calvino
Image
Every time I must find something to do that will look like something a little beyond my capabilities.
Italo Calvino
Image
Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.
Italo Calvino
Image
Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most important ally. He introduces me to the world.
Italo Calvino
Image
Don't ask where the rest of this book is! It is a shrill cry that comes from an undefined spot among the shelves. All books continue in the beyond.
Italo Calvino
Image
Success consists in felicity of verbal expression, which every so often may result from a quick flash of inspiration but as a rule involves a patient search... for the sentence in which every word is unalterable.
Italo Calvino
Image
Whenever humanity seems condemned to heaviness, I think I should fly like Perseus into a different space. I don't mean escaping into dreams or into the irrational. I mean that I have to change my approach, look at the world from a different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification.
Italo Calvino
Image
The novels that attract me most are those that create an illusion of transparency around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel, and perverse as possible.
Italo Calvino