Umberto Eco died: quotes from the books of the famous writer and philosopher

Umberto Eco. Quotes and aphorisms

What is love? In the whole world, neither man, nor the devil, nor any other thing inspires as much suspicion in me as love, for it penetrates deeper into the soul than other feelings. Nothing in the world occupies so much, binds the heart so much, like love. Therefore, if you do not have a weapon in your soul that tames love, this soul is defenseless and there is no salvation for it.

Ah, love has so many complications. First it softens the soul... Then it ulcerates... However, the soul, plunged into a fever, into the flame of divine love, into a fiery furnace, where it will finally rot and thin out and turn into lime, is happy even with this torture, even with this bloody torment...

The nature of love is good, and what is good is determined by knowledge, and one cannot love anything unless it is known to be good.

Love tends to harm the lover if it is excessive.

The devil is not the victory of the flesh. The devil is the arrogance of the spirit. This is belief without a smile. This is a truth that is never in doubt. The devil is gloomy because he always knows that wherever he goes, he always comes back to where he came from.

What is good for some is evil for others. But in fairy tales, too, the difference between a fairy and a witch is a matter of age and appearance.

For every virtue and every sin there is an example in the bestiaries, where the human world is shown under the guise of animals.

At the next stage of perfection we will learn to do without words, just a touch and you will understand everything.

We project ourselves all the time into an imaginary world or into the future based on what we know. But the future does not originate in what is known. We no longer live in a calm present, but are constantly trying to prepare for the future.

I must admit, I would like to meet a unicorn while making my way through a dense forest. Otherwise, what pleasure is there in making your way through a dense forest?

My greatest fear was that I would stumble upon some new mirror. Because such is the magic of mirrors: even when you know that it is only a mirror, they still frighten.

Hatred is a true natural passion. It is love that is abnormal. Christ was crucified for her.

There is no greater injustice than the punishment of the righteous, for the last sinner, friends, is forgiven for his last sin, but the righteous is not forgiven even for his first.

People never do evil with such enthusiasm and completeness as when they do it in the name of religion.

There was not enough courage to pursue the weaknesses of sinners, since they have the same weaknesses as the saints.

Yes, there is a voluptuousness of pain, as well as a voluptuousness of faith and even a voluptuousness of humility. If so little was enough for the rebel angels for the fire of adoration and humility to become in them the fire of pride and rebellion, what can we say about the weak human race?

You live on surfaces. Your depth is a layering of many surfaces, so many that they give the impression of density, but if it were real density, you would not support your own weight.

Some people simply cannot accept the world as it is. Unable to remake it, they need to rewrite it at all costs.

Lacking moral principles, scoundrels usually wrap themselves in a banner.

No one ever forces you to know. You just have to know, that's all. Even if you risk misunderstanding.

But the highest wisdom is to know that you will find out everything in the world too late. Everything becomes clear when there is nothing to understand.

It was all so heartbreakingly right and there was no other solution.

There is a lot of talk about imperfection, but the very concept of imperfection clearly suffers from imperfection.

The suspicion remains that I forgot something. It’s as if something had been stuffed into the folds of fussiness, like someone stuffing money or a piece of paper with an address into the smallest pocket of jeans and only later realizing that this little thing was decisive, the only thing, the main thing.

To hesitate does not mean to waste time: we often stop to think before making an important decision.

Tumbling around in your emptiness, you can convince yourself that you are in communion with the One; but as soon as you start tinkering with clay, even if it’s electronic, you are a demiurge, and there’s no getting away from it, and whoever is going to create the world is inevitably already tainted by mistakes and evil...

Once perfection is achieved, it is impossible to move further.

Experience shows that a person who does not regret anything does not feel the desire to become better.

I looked for peace everywhere and found it in only one place - in the corner, with a book.

Any reading is a test of one’s ability to listen to unspoken clues.

A great book always remains alive, it grows and ages with us, but never dies. Time fertilizes it and transforms it, while uninteresting works slip past History and disappear.

Just as an excess of tender feelings usually weakens and spoils a warrior, so an excess of possessive love and curiosity leads to the fact that books develop a disease that inevitably destroys them.

Since the fictional environment is much more comfortable than the natural one, we try to read life as if it, too, were a work of fiction.

The world is monotonous, history teaches people nothing, and in each generation there are still the same fears, the same passions, events are not repeated, but one thing reminds of another... news, discoveries, revelations - everything becomes obsolete.

After all, all text is a lazy machine that requires the reader to do some of the work for it. A text that would state everything that a person receiving it needs to understand would have a serious drawback - it would be endless.

Books are written not to be believed, but to be thought about. Having a book in front of him, everyone should try to understand not what it expresses, but what it wants to express.

Rhetoric is the art of good expression, and whether the truth is expressed or a lie is no longer so important.

I am convinced that even in the most pitiful essay I come across a grain of, if not truth, then at least an entertaining untruth...

It's nice to admit that a library doesn't have to consist of books we've read or will ever read. These are books that we can read. Or they could read it. Even if we never open them.

Human negligence has caused perhaps more damage to books than those who deliberately destroyed them.

The library contains evidence of truth and evidence of falsehood.

If you're going to be an author and maybe write your own stories, you need the ability to lie, otherwise the stories will be boring. But lying should be done in moderation.

Whatever character you invent, one way or another it will grow from your experience and your memory.

Great works influence each other through us. We can probably explain how much Cervantes influenced Kafka. But we can also say... that Kafka influenced Cervantes. If I read Kafka first and then Cervantes, Kafka will unwittingly make adjustments to my reading of Cervantes. Just like our life path, our personal experience, the era in which we live, the information we receive - everything, even our domestic troubles and the problems of our children, everything influences our reading of old texts.

Who knows? Perhaps the greatest writer is the one whose works we have not read.

Genius is an obscene word used by cunning people to give themselves literary significance.

Be modest and careful until the time comes to open your mouth. But when you open it, speak confidently and proudly.

Anything becomes significant when understood in relation to another phenomenon. Communication changes perspective. Makes you think that any fact in this world, any name, any spoken or written word has not the meaning that is visible, but one that is associated with the Mystery. The motto here is simple: always suspect, suspect everywhere. You can even read between the lines the sign on the subway that says “do not lean.”

Art is an escape from personal feeling.

Being educated does not mean being smart. No. But today everyone wants to be heard and in some cases inevitably exposes their stupidity. So we can say that previously stupidity did not advertise itself, but in our time it rebels.

Stupidity is when one uses one's stupidity with arrogance and persistence.

A fool is not just mistaken. He loudly declares his error, proclaims it, wants everyone to hear about it.

Sometimes it is enough to say a few meaningless words to make history.

When you create at random what comes into your head, and people declare that this is the truest truth, you begin to somehow believe it yourself.

It must be the duty of anyone who loves people to teach them to laugh at the truth, to teach them to laugh at the truth itself, since the only solid truth is that one must free oneself from an unhealthy passion for truth.

The history of the beautiful and reasonable, to which we limit our education, or, rather, to which others have limited our education, is only a small part of the annals of humanity.

Faith is always stronger than knowledge, we may be surprised at this, or regret it, but it is so.

When faith comes, science is set on fire.

By the way, don’t get too excited about these relics. I saw a lot of fragments of the cross in a variety of churches. If they are all genuine, it means that our Lord was tormented not on two crossed logs, but on an entire fence...

The entire world culture wants one thing - to make infinity comprehensible.

The original order is like a net, or like a ladder that is used to climb somewhere.

The future does not take into account the past, just like the present.

When you are content to follow the rules, all the sharpness, all the inspiration disappears.

The only useful truths are tools that are then discarded.

Logic can be of great benefit only under one condition: to resort to it at the right time and to escape from it at the right time.

It is important to observe moderation. Abuse makes people sick.

We wanted too much, but now we can’t stop wanting.

Both too much information and too little information can be misleading.

The past never ceases to surprise us, more than the present, and perhaps more than the future.

About books

“I looked for peace everywhere and found it in only one place—in the corner, with a book.”

— Since a fictional environment is much more comfortable than a natural one, we try to read life as if it were also a work of fiction.

“I believe that, among other important aesthetic considerations, this is why we read novels: they give us the comfortable feeling of being in a world where the concept of truth is indisputable, while the real world is a much less reliable place.”

“I am convinced that even in the most pitiful essay I will come across a kernel of, if not truth, then at least an entertaining untruth, and extremes very often overlap.”

- Books are written not to be believed in, but to be thought about. Having a book in front of him, everyone should try to understand not what it expresses, but what it wants to express.

— Do speed readers really feel the taste of what they read?

- We live for books. The sweetest of destinies in our disordered, degenerate world.

— Regarding the books on our shelves that we have not read and, probably, will never read: each of us probably has a tendency to put aside books that we have planned to read, but later, later, maybe when Someday, in another life. How terrible are the groans of the dying: their hour of death has come, but they have not taken up Proust!

About information

— Both an excess of information and a lack of information can be misleading.

“Logic can be of great benefit only under one condition: to resort to it in time and to escape from it in time.”

“Nothing gives rise to so many interpretations as nonsense.”

- Being educated does not mean being smart. No. But today everyone wants to be heard and in some cases inevitably exposes their stupidity. So we can say that previously stupidity did not advertise itself, but in our time it rebels.

About love

- It is impossible to fall in love suddenly. And during periods when love is brewing, you need to look very carefully at where you step, so as not to fall in love with something completely wrong.

- In true love, the most important thing is the good of the loved one.

- What is love? In the whole world, neither man, nor the devil, nor any other thing inspires as much suspicion in me as love, for it penetrates deeper into the soul than other feelings. Nothing in the world occupies so much, binds the heart so much, like love. Therefore, if you do not have a weapon in your soul that tames love, this soul is defenseless and there is no salvation for it.