Quote

Every European goes on the streets and sees medieval churches. Not if you live in Indianapolis. The most exciting letters I received were from people in places like that.

Umberto Eco

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Umberto Eco
Age: 84 †
Born: 1932
Born: January 5
Died: 2016
Died: February 19
Essayist
Historian
Literary Critic
Literary Scholar
Medievalist
Novelist
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Semiotician
Translator
Lissändria
Umberto Ecco
Umberto Eccounstino
Humberto Eco
Dedalus
Umberto Eko
Oumperto Eko
Eco Umberto
U. Eco
Every
Sees
Like
Letters
People
Exciting
Places
Indianapolis
Streets
Medieval
Goes
Churches
Church
Received
Live
European

More quotes by Umberto Eco

Image
My grandfather had a particularly important influence on my life, even though I didn't visit him often, since he lived about three miles out of town and he died when I was six. He was remarkably curious about the world, and he read lots of books.
Umberto Eco
Image
Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.
Umberto Eco
Image
When you are on the dancefloor, there is nothing to do but dance.
Umberto Eco
Image
Naturally, everything depends on one's background books and on what one is looking for.
Umberto Eco
Image
How beautiful was the spectacle of nature not yet touched by the often perverse wisdom of man!
Umberto Eco
Image
The faith a movement proclaims doesn't count: what counts is the hope it offers. All heresies are the banner of a reality, an exclusion. Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is.
Umberto Eco
Image
How clear everything becomes when you look from the darkness of a dungeon.
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
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
New Orleans is not in the grip of a neurosis of a denied past it passes out memories generously like a great lord it doesn't have to pursue the real thing.
Umberto Eco
Image
You’ll come back To me . . . It’s written in the stars, you see, you’ll come back. You’ll come back, it’s a fact that I am strong because I do believe in you.
Umberto Eco
Image
[In my writing] I know that I have made a caricature out of [others' academic] theories [but] I think that caricatures are frequently good portraits.
Umberto Eco
Image
That is a real attitude - to see everything as being meaningful, even the less important things, to prove something, even the greater problems of life.
Umberto Eco
Image
Memory is a stopgap for humans, for whom time flies and what is passed is passed.
Umberto Eco
Image
The older I grow and the more I abandon myself to God's will, the less I value intelligence that wants to know and will that wants to do and as the only element of salvation I recognize faith, which can wait patiently, without asking too many questions.
Umberto Eco
Image
And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?
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
Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.
Umberto Eco
Image
Your masters at Oxford have taught you to idolize reason, drying up the prophetic capacities of your heart!
Umberto Eco
Image
The light in her eyes was beyond description, yet it did not instill improper thoughts: it inspired a love tempered by awe, purifying the hearts it inflamed.
Umberto Eco