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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.

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
Reflects
Whoever
Four
Born
Better
Things
Never
Would

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History is rich with adventurous men, long on charisma, with a highly developed instinct for their own interests, who have pursued personal power - bypassing parliaments and constitutions, distributing favours to their minions, and conflating their own desires with the interests of the community.
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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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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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Beauty has never been absolute and immutable but has taken on different aspects depending on the historical period and the country
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When we traded the results of our fantasies, it seemed to us-and rightly-that we had proceeded by unwarranted associations, by shortcuts so extraordinary that, if anyone had accused us of really believing them, we would have been ashamed.
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A library's ideal function is to be a little bit like a bouquiniste's stall, a place for trouvailles.
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Never affirm, always allude: allusions are made to test the spirit and probe the heart.
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I don't miss my youth. I'm glad I had one, but I wouldn't like to start over.
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American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100oC
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The wise man does not discriminate he gathers all the shreds of light, from wherever they may come.
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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.
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There are more people than you think who want to have a challenging experience, in which they are obliged to reflect about the past.
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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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Only an unhinged movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks, of visual icebergs. It should display not one central idea but many. It should not reveal a coherent philosophy of composition. It must live on, and because of, its glorious ricketiness.
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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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My collection of rare books concerns only books that don't tell the truth.
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Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means.
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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.
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It comes down to a question of attention: it's difficult to use the Net distractedly, unlike the television or the radio.
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Deciding what is being talked about is a kind of interpretive bet.
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