Umberto Eco Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

  Umberto Eco

  Good Morning, Book, Smell

• We live for books.

  Umberto Eco

  Book

  Umberto Eco (2014). “The Name of the Rose”, p.120, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer is not aware of.

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Intelligent, Assuming

• Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means.

  Umberto Eco

  Trust, Book, Mean

  Umberto Eco (1995). “Name of the Rose”, p.328, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.

  Umberto Eco

  Inspirational, Funny, War

  Umberto Eco (1995). “Name of the Rose”, p.50, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• You can be obsessed by remorse all your life, not because you chose the wrong thing- you can always repent, atone : but because you never had the chance to prove to yourself that you would have chosen the right thing.

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Chance, Language

  Umberto Eco (2007). “Foucault's Pendulum”, p.118, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon... The book has been thoroughly tested, and it's very hard to see how it could be improved on for its current purposes.

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Hammers, Purpose

• The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.

  Umberto Eco

  Lying, Book, Reading

• Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treausre of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.

  Umberto Eco

  Lying, Book, Reflection

• For what I saw at the abbey then (and will now recount) caused me to think that often inquisitors create heretics. And not only in the sense that they imagine heretics where these do not exist, but also that inquisitors repress the heretical putrefaction so vehemently that many are driven to share in it, in their hatred for the judges. Truly, a circle conceived by the Devil. God preserve us.

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Thinking, Circles

  "The Name Of The Rose". Book by Umberto Eco, 1980.

• To escape the power of the unknown, to prove to yourself that you don't believe in it, you accept its spells. Like an avowed atheist who sees the Devil at night, you reason: He certainly doesn't exist; this is therefore an illusion, perhaps a result of indigestion. But the Devil is sure that he exists, and believes in his upside-down theology. What, then, will frighten him? You make the sign of the cross, and he vanishes in a puff of brimstone.

  Umberto Eco

  Atheist, Believe, Book

  Umberto Eco (2007). “Foucault's Pendulum”, p.171, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• But why doesn't the Gospel ever say that Christ laughed?" I asked, for no good reason. "Is Jorge right?" "Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn't interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave. . . .

  Umberto Eco

  Christian, Laughter, Believe

  Umberto Eco (1995). “Name of the Rose”, p.173, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Inquiry, Made

  Umberto Eco (2014). “The Name of the Rose”, p.338, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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

  Book, Stories, Speak

  Umberto Eco (1994). “The Name of the Rose”, p.549, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.

  Umberto Eco

  Sweet, Book, Decay

  Umberto Eco (2014). “The Name of the Rose”, p.120, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• I think every professor and writer is in some way an exhibitionist because his or her normal activity is a theatrical one. When you give a lesson the situation is the same as writing a book. You have to capture the attention, the complicity of your audience.

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Writing, Thinking

• We stopped to browse in the cases, and now that William - with his new glasses on his nose - could linger and read the books, at every title he discovered he let out exclamations of happiness, either because he knew the work, or because he had been seeking it for a long time, or finally because he had never heard it mentioned and was highly excited and titillated. In short, for him every book was like a fabulous animal that he was meeting in a strange land.

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Animal, Glasses

  Umberto Eco (2014). “The Name of the Rose”, p.331, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Land, Feelings

  Umberto Eco (2011). “The Prague Cemetery”, p.113, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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

  Book, Humility, Temptation

  Umberto Eco (1995). “Name of the Rose”, p.195, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• As an adolescent I wrote comic books, because I read lots of them, and fantasy novels set in Malaysia and Central Africa.

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Fantasy Novels, Comic

  "Umberto Eco, The Art of Fiction No. 197". Interview with Azam Zanganeh, www.theparisreview.org. 2008.

• 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.

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Grandfather, Important

• A book is a fragile creature. It suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands.

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Hands, Suffering

  Umberto Eco (1994). “The Name of the Rose”, p.42, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• I think a book should be judged 10 years later, after reading and re-reading it.

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Reading, Thinking

  "Umberto Eco: 'People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged'". Interview with Stephen Moss, www.theguardian.com. November 27, 2011.

• My maternal grandmother - she was a compulsive reader. She had only been through five grades of elementary school, but she was a member of the municipal library, and she brought home two or three books a week for me. They could be dime novels or Balzac.

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Home, School

• There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past. As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten.

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Past, Magic Moments

  Umberto Eco (1995). “Name of the Rose”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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