Quote

The Devil is not the Prince of Matter the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came.

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
Prince
Moving
Arrogance
Spirit
Smile
Truth
Devil
Without
Return
Seized
Matter
Doubt
Whence
Going
Came
Grim
Always
Returns
Never
Faith

More quotes by Umberto Eco

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The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.
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We live for books.
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libraries are fascinating places: sometimes you feel you are under the canopy of a railway station, and when you read books about exotic places there's a feeling of travelling to distant lands
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The monkish vows keep us far from that sink of vice that is the female body, but often they bring us close to other errors. Can I finally hide from myself the fact that even today my old age is still stirred by the noonday demon when my eyes, in choir, happen to linger on the beardless face of a novice, pure and fresh as a maidens?
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The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.
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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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I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.
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What did I really think fifteen years ago? A nonbeliever, I felt guilty in the midst of all those believers. And since it seemed to me that they were in the right, I decided to believe, as you might decide to take an aspirin: It can't hurt and you might get better.
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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.
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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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The real hero is always a hero by mistake.
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Musical compositions can be very sad - Chopin - but you have the pleasure of this sadness. The cheap consolation is: you will be happy. The higher consolation is the pleasure and recognition of your unhappiness, the pleasure of having recognised that fate, destiny and life are such as they are and so you reach a higher form of consciousness.
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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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Homer's work hits again and again on the topos of the inexpressible. People will always do that.
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But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.
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To read a paper book is another experience: you can do it on a ship, on the branch of a tree, on your bed, even if there is a blackout.
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One can be a great poet and be politically stupid.
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My grandfather had a particularly important influence on my life, even though I didn't visit him often, since he lived about three miles out of town and he died when I was six. He was remarkably curious about the world, and he read lots of books.
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I suspect that there is no serious scholar who doesn’t like to watch television. I’m just the only one who confesses.
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When the writer (or the artist in general) says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules.
Umberto Eco