Umberto Eco quotes - page 3

Signs are not empirical objects. Empirical objects become signs (or they are looked at as signs) only from the point of view of a philosophical decision. (Umberto Eco)

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

Umberto Eco

It was awkward, revisiting a world you have never seen before: like coming home, after a long journey, to someone else's house.

Umberto Eco

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.

Umberto Eco

To survive, you must tell stories.

Umberto Eco

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

Umberto Eco

Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.

Umberto Eco

Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.

Umberto Eco

Love is wiser than wisdom.

Umberto Eco

What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?

Umberto Eco

We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay. (Umberto Eco)

When you are on the dancefloor, there is nothing to do but dance.

Umberto Eco

It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once.

Umberto Eco

Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.

Umberto Eco

Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards; those without moral principles usually wrap a flag around themselves, and those bastards always talk about the purity of race.

Umberto Eco

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

I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.

Umberto Eco

Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow.

Umberto Eco

the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life.

Umberto Eco

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.

Umberto Eco

A mystic is a hysteric who has met her confessor before her doctor. (Umberto Eco)

Love flourishes in expectation. Expectation strolls through the spacious fields of Time towards Opportunity.

Umberto Eco

National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.

Umberto Eco

You'll come back To me... It's written in the stars, you see, you'll come back. You'll come back, it's a fact that I am strong because I do believe in you.

Umberto Eco

Listening doesn't mean trying to understand. Anything, however trifling, may be of use one day. What matters is to know something that others don't know you know.

Umberto Eco

Previous
1
2
3 (Current)
4
...
11
Next

Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco - Image

Occupation: Italian Semiotician
Born: January 5, 1932
Died: February 19, 2016
Quotes count: 256
Wikipedia: Umberto Eco

Related authors

Italo Calvino 85

Italian Journalist

Jorge Luis Borges 237

Argentine Writer

Paulo Coelho 1006

Brazilian Lyricist

Aldous Huxley 416

English Writer

Dario Fo 29

Italian Playwright

Ferdinand de Saussure 36

Swiss Educator

Jean-Jacques Annaud 19

French Director

Roland Barthes 68

French Philosopher

Michel Foucault 137

French Historian

Günter Grass 35

German Novelist