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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

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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
Believe
Subject
Case
Follow
Subjects
Poetry
Cases
Grasp
Words
Opposite
Happens
Opposites

More quotes by Umberto Eco

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Not that the incredulous person doesn't believe in anything. It's just that he doesn't believe in everything.
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Love flourishes in expectation. Expectation strolls through the spacious fields of Time towards Opportunity.
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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.
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But it has often happened that I have found the most seductive depictions of sin in the pages of those very men of incorruptible virtue who condemned their spell and their effects.
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Jacopo Belbo didnt understand that he had had his moment and that it would have to be enough for him, for all his life. Not recognizing it, he spent the rest of his days seeking something else, until he damned himself.
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People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged.
Umberto Eco
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Today I realize that many recent exercises in deconstructive reading read as if inspired by my parody. This is parody's mission: it must never be afraid of going too far. If its aim is true, it simply heralds what others will later produce, unblushing, with impassive and assertive gravity.
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Perhaps I am not as wise as I like to think I am.
Umberto Eco
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Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used to tell at all.
Umberto Eco
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The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts therefore it is dumb.
Umberto Eco
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The art of splitting hairs four ways. This is the department of useless techniques. Mechanical Avunculogratulation, for example, is how to build machines for greeting uncles. We're not sure, though, if Pylocatabasis belongs, since it's the art of being saved by a hair. Somehow that doesn't seem completely useless.
Umberto Eco
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[I am fascinated by stupidity] because normal intelligence is boring. Two plus two makes four - finished. You have no possibilities! Stupidity is infinite. Two plus two can make billions of different numbers.
Umberto Eco
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Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.
Umberto Eco
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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.
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Dan Brown, is a character from Foucault's Pendulum! I invented him. He shares my characters' fascinations - the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist.
Umberto Eco
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The more elusive and ambiguous a symbol is, the more it gains significance and power.
Umberto Eco
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If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things.
Umberto Eco
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The United States needed a civil war to unite properly.
Umberto Eco
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Memory is a stopgap for humans, for whom time flies and what is passed is passed.
Umberto Eco
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I felt no passion, no jealousy, no nostalgia. I was hollow, clear-headed, clean, and as emotionless as an aluminum pot.
Umberto Eco