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

More quotes by Umberto Eco

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One can be a great poet and be politically stupid.
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We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die.
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Is it worth it to be born if you cannot remember it later? And, technically speaking, had I ever been born? Other people, of course, said that I was. As far as I know, I was born in late April, at sixty years of age, in a hospital room.
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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.
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As an adolescent I wrote comic books, because I read lots of them, and fantasy novels set in Malaysia and Central Africa.
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We live for books.
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There is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in every direction, but I find they have less horror when among them than when in anticipation.
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There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past. As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten.
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The truth is an anagram of an anagram.
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For, I must tell you, in this world where today all lose their minds over many & wondrous Machines - some of which, alas, you can see also in this Siege - I construct Aristotelian Machines, that allow anyone to see with Words.
Umberto Eco
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I was in a maze. No matter which way I turned, it was the wrong way.
Umberto Eco
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The more things you know, or pretend to know, the more powerful you are. It doesn't matter if the things are true. What counts, remember, is to possess a secret.
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I've always said that I learned the English I know through two sources -- Marvel Comics and Finnegans Wake.
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It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once.
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Creativity can only be anarchic, capitalist, Darwinian.
Umberto Eco
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When you are on the dancefloor, there is nothing to do but dance.
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How beautiful was the spectacle of nature not yet touched by the often perverse wisdom of man!
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The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away.
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True learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth.
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Our most noted satirists are true columnists and their opinions can be worth more than any well-documented exposé.
Umberto Eco