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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

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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
Scoundrel
Friend
Scoundrels
Serious
Salute
Clear
Kidding
Making
Precise
Sometimes
Clearly
Mean
Intention
Really
Things
Smile

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Whoever reflects on four things I would be better if he were never born: that which is above, that which is below, that which is before, that which is after.
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Is it possible to say It was a beautiful morning at the end of November without feeling like Snoopy?
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Because of lies, we can produce and invent a possible world.
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Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message.
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Homer's work hits again and again on the topos of the inexpressible. People will always do that.
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The only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.
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Contemporary societies have lost the sense of the feast but have kept the obscure drive for it.
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We were clever enough to turn a laundry list into poetry.
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I consider always the adult life to be the continuous retrieval of childhood.
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If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that's credulity.
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The pleasures of love are pains that become desirable, where sweetness and torment blend, and so love is voluntary insanity, infernal paradise, and celestial hell - in short, harmony of opposite yearnings, sorrowful laughter, soft diamond.
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Then we are living in a place abandoned by God, I said, disheartened. Have you found any places where God would have felt at home? William asked me, looking down from his great height.
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Each of us is sometimes a cretin, a fool, a moron, or a lunatic. A normal person is just a reasonable mix of these components, these four ideal types.
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Love is wiser than wisdom.
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Man's principle trait is a readiness to believe anything. Otherwise, how could the Church have survived for almost two thousand years in the absense of universal gullibility?
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We know that sensory phenomena are transcribed in the photographic emulsion in such a way that even if there is a causal link with the real phenomena, the graphic images can be considered as wholly arbitrary with respect to these phenomena.
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Nothing can shake my belief that this world is the fruit of a dark god whose shadow I extend.
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Even today, I frequently meet scientists who, outside their own narrow discipline, are superstitious.
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Media populism means appealing to people directly through media. A politician who can master the media can shape political affairs outside of parliament and even eliminate the mediation of parliament.
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