Home / Quotes / Quote by Umberto Eco

Quote by Umberto Eco

“A library's ideal function is to be a little bit like a bouquiniste's stall, a place for trouvailles.”

Quote by Umberto Eco

Author

Italian essayist, scholar, and critic. Umberto Eco is renowned for his unique literary style and profound academic background. His works integrate history, philosophy, literature, and semiotics, with his most famous novel being 'The Name of the Rose'. more

You May Also Like

“History is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error.”

World Blood Errors Enigma

Author:Umberto Eco

“They [the Templars] had read Avicenna, and they were not ignorant, like the Europeans. How could you live alongside a tolerant, mystical, libertine culture for two centuries without succumbing to its allure, particularly when you compared it to Western culture, which was crude, vulgar, barbaric, and Germanic?”

Two Culture Century Western Ignorant Mystical Vulgar Crude Western Culture Barbaric Allure Libertine Succumbing Templars

Book:Foucault's Pendulum

Source: Foucault's Pendulum

“Beauty is, in some way, boring. Even if its concept changes through the ages... a beautiful object must always follow certain rules. A beautiful nose shouldn't be longer than that or shorter than that, on the contrary, an ugly nose can be as long as the one of Pinocchio, or as big as the trunk of an elephant, or like the beak of an eagle, and so ugliness is unpredictable, and offers an infinite range of possibility. Beauty is finite, ugliness is infinite like God.”

“Man's principle trait is a readiness to believe anything. Otherwise, how could the Church have survived for almost two thousand years in the absense of universal gullibility?”

Men Years Believe Two Church Principles Thousand Universal Traits Thousand Years Survived Readiness Gullibility

Author:Umberto Eco

“There must be a connection between the lust for power and impotentia coeundi. I liked Marx, I was sure that he and his Jenny had made love merrily. You can feel it in the easy pace of his prose and in his humor. On the other hand, I remember remarking one day in the corridors of the university that if you screwed Krupskaya all the time, you'd end up writing a lousy book like Materialism and Empiriocriticism.”

Ifs Feels Writing Made Book Ends Hands Remember Easy One Day Connections University Lust Prose Materialism Pace Corridors Jenny Lust For Power

Author:Umberto Eco

“Every thing thinks, but according to its complexity. If this is so, then stones also think...and this stone thinks only I stone, I stone, I stone. But perhaps it cannot even say I. It thinks: Stone, stone, stone... God enjoys being All, as this stone enjoys being almost nothing, but since it knows no other way of being, it is pleased with its own way, eternally satisfied with itself.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Way Enjoy Stones Satisfied Complexity

Author:Umberto Eco

“All the privileged can travel, see different worlds, not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.”

People Thinking World Important Different Interesting Privileged Different Worlds

Author:Zaha Hadid

“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.”

War Feelings Black Religious White Blood Century Position Passionate Arise Shed Good And Bad Religious Wars

Author:Umberto Eco

“Books always speak of other books.”

Book:The Name of the Rose

Source: The Name of the Rose

“For centuries, as pope and emperor tore each other apart in their quarrels over power, the excluded went on living on the fringe, like lepers, of whom true lepers are only the illustration ordained by God to make us understand this wondrous parable, so that in saying 'lepers' we would understand 'outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the cities.' But we did not understand; the mystery of leprosy has continued to haunt us because we have not recognized the nature of the sign.”

Simple Poor Cities Mystery Century Pope Quarrels Fringe Emperor Living On Countryside Illustration Outcast Wondrous Excluded Humiliated Parables Leper Leprosy

Book:Name of the Rose

Source: Name of the Rose