Quote

A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.

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
Good
Temptation
Seduction
Love
Curiosity
Adultery
Humility
Wishing
Glory
Monk
Books
Yearning
Knowledge
Secular
Laymen
Wish
Riches
Layman
Book
Surely
Monks

More quotes by Umberto Eco

Image
Beauty is boring because it is predictable.
Umberto Eco
Image
We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death.
Umberto Eco
Image
but I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric.
Umberto Eco
Image
Does the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus' psychology was deduced by Aeschylus or Freud, but the character is simply there, fixed in a pure and terribly disquieting state.
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
Once you reach your fifties, you have to stop being interested in the present and write only on Elizabethan poets.
Umberto Eco
Image
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.
Umberto Eco
Image
I started to work in television for three or four years, in 1954. There was one channel of television, black and white. But it could be entertaining and educational. During the evening they showed important plays, opera or Shakespeare's tragedies.
Umberto Eco
Image
After years of practice, I can walk into a bookstore and understand its layout in a few seconds. I can glance at the spine of a book and make a good guess at its content from a number of signs.
Umberto Eco
Image
A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.
Umberto Eco
Image
All the religious wars that have caused blood to be shed for centuries arise from passionate feelings and facile counter-positions, such as Us and Them, good and bad, white and black.
Umberto Eco
Image
Deciding what is being talked about is a kind of interpretive bet.
Umberto Eco
Image
I was in a maze. No matter which way I turned, it was the wrong way.
Umberto Eco
Image
It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.
Umberto Eco
Image
It takes a little time, but the pleasures of cooking begin before the pleasures of the palate, and preparing means anticipating.
Umberto Eco
Image
I could work in the shower if I had plastic paper.
Umberto Eco
Image
When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love.
Umberto Eco
Image
If photography is to be likened to perception, this is not because the former is a natural process but because the latter is also coded.
Umberto Eco
Image
When your true enemies are too strong, you have to choose weaker enemies.
Umberto Eco
Image
We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.
Umberto Eco