Umberto Eco

“We were clever enough to turn a laundry list into poetry.”

“Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.(Casablanca, or, The Clichés Are Having a Ball)”

“I love the smell of book ink in the morning.”

“There was no plot... and I discovered it by mistake.”

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

“On sober reflection, I find few reasons for publishing my Italian version of an obscure, neo-Gothic French version of a seventeenth century Latin edition of a work written in Latin by a German Monk toward the end of the fourteenth century...First of all, what style should I employ?”

“I should be at peace. I have understood. Don't some say that peace comes when you understand? I have understood. I should be at peace. Who said that peace derives from the contemplation of order, order understood, enjoyed, realized without residuum, in joy and truimph, the end of effort? All is clear, limpid; the eye rests on the whole and on the parts and sees how the parts have conspired to make the whole; it perceives the center where the lymph flows, the breath, the root of the whys...”

“As the man said, for every complex problem there’s a simple solution, and it’s wrong.”

“There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics…Cretins don’t even talk; they sort of slobber and stumble…Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation…Fools don’t claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend, they’re magnificent…Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says that all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too, therefore cats bark…Morons will occasionally say something that’s right, but they say it for the wrong reason…A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn’t know the ropes. The moron proves his thesis; he has logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic on the other hand, doesn’t concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. 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…There are lunatics who don’t bring up the Templars, but those who do are the most insidious. At first they seem normal, then all of a sudden…”

“Only an unhinged movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks, of visual icebergs. It should display not one central idea but many. It should not reveal a coherent philosophy of composition. It must live on, and because of, its glorious ricketiness.”

“Where else? I belong to a lost generation and am comfortable only in the company of others who are lost and lonely.”

“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 treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.”

“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.”

“Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.”

“True learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth.”

“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...”

“omne animal triste post coitum”

“penitenziagite! watch out for the draco who cometh in futurum to gnaw your anima! death is super nos! pray the santo pater come to liberar nos a malo and all our sin! ha ha, you like this negromanzia de domini nostri jesu christi! et anco jois m'es dols e plazer m'es dolors...cave el diabolo! semper lying in wait for me in some angulum to snap at my heels. but salvatore is not stupidus! bonum monsasterium, and aqui refectorium and pray to dominum nostrum. and the resto is not worth merda. amen. no?”

“I will tell you the deeper significance of this, which otherwise might seem a banal hydraulic joke. Caus knew that if one fills a vessel with water and seals it at the top, the water, even if one then opens a hole in the bottom, will not come out. But if one opens a hole in the top, also, the water spurts out below." "Isn't that obvious?" I said. "Air enters at the top and presses the water down." "A typical scientific explanation, in which the cause is mistaken for the effect, or vice versa. The question is not why the water comes out in the second place, but why it refuses to come out in the first case." "And why does it refuse?" Garamond asked eagerly. "Because, if it came out, it would leave a vacuum in the vessel, and nature abhors a vacuum. Nequaquam vacui was a Rosicrucian principle, which modern science has forgotten." "Excuse me," Belbo said to Agliè, "but your argument is simply post hoc ergo ante hoc. What follows causes what came before.You must not think linearly. The water in these fountains doesn't. Nature doesn't; nature knows nothing of time. Time is an invention of the West.”

“Love is wiser than wisdom.”

“Le regole per scrivere bene (adattate da Umberto Eco)1. Evita le allitterazioni, anche se allettano gli allocchi.2. Non è che il congiuntivo va evitato, anzi, che lo si usa quando necessario.3. Evita le frasi fatte: è minestra riscaldata.4. Esprimiti siccome ti nutri.5. Non usare sigle commerciali & abbreviazioni etc.6. Ricorda (sempre) che la parentesi (anche quando pare indispensabile) interrompe il filo del discorso.7. Stai attento a non fare... indigestione di puntini di sospensione.8. Usa meno virgolette possibili: non è “fine”.9. Non generalizzare mai.10. Le parole straniere non fanno affatto bon ton.11. Sii avaro di citazioni. Diceva giustamente Emerson: “Odio le citazioni. Dimmi solo quello che sai tu.”12. I paragoni sono come le frasi fatte.13. Non essere ridondante; non ripetere due volte la stessa cosa; ripetere è superfluo (per ridondanza s’intende la spiegazione inutile di qualcosa che il lettore ha già capito).14. Solo gli stronzi usano parole volgari.15. Sii sempre più o meno specifico.16. L'iperbole è la più straordinaria delle tecniche espressive.17. Non fare frasi di una sola parola. Eliminale.18. Guardati dalle metafore troppo ardite: sono piume sulle scaglie di un serpente.19. Metti, le virgole, al posto giusto.20. Distingui tra la funzione del punto e virgola e quella dei due punti: anche se non è facile.21. Se non trovi l’espressione italiana adatta non ricorrere mai all’espressione dialettale: peso e! tacòn del buso.22. Non usare metafore incongruenti anche se ti paiono “cantare”: sono come un cigno che deraglia.23. C’è davvero bisogno di domande retoriche?24. Sii conciso, cerca di condensare i tuoi pensieri nel minor numero di parole possibile, evitando frasi lunghe — o spezzate da incisi che inevitabilmente confondono il lettore poco attento — affinché il tuo discorso non contribuisca a quell’inquinamento dell’informazione che è certamente (specie quando inutilmente farcito di precisazioni inutili, o almeno non indispensabili) una delle tragedie di questo nostro tempo dominato dal potere dei media.25. Gli accenti non debbono essere nè scorretti nè inutili, perchè chi lo fà sbaglia.26. Non si apostrofa un’articolo indeterminativo prima del sostantivo maschile.27. Non essere enfatico! Sii parco con gli esclamativi!28. Neppure i peggiori fans dei barbarismi pluralizzano i termini stranieri.29. Scrivi in modo esatto i nomi stranieri, come Beaudelaire, Roosewelt, Niezsche, e simili.30. Nomina direttamente autori e personaggi di cui parli, senza perifrasi. Così faceva il maggior scrittore lombardo del XIX secolo, l’autore del 5 maggio.31. All’inizio del discorso usa la captatio benevolentiae, per ingraziarti il lettore (ma forse siete così stupidi da non capire neppure quello che vi sto dicendo).32. Cura puntiliosamente l’ortograffia.33. Inutile dirti quanto sono stucchevoli le preterizioni.34. Non andare troppo sovente a capo.Almeno, non quando non serve.35. Non usare mai il plurale majestatis. Siamo convinti che faccia una pessima impressione.36. Non confondere la causa con l’effetto: saresti in errore e dunque avresti sbagliato.37. Non costruire frasi in cui la conclusione non segua logicamente dalle premesse: se tutti facessero così, allora le premesse conseguirebbero dalle conclusioni.38. Non indulgere ad arcaismi, apax legomena o altri lessemi inusitati, nonché deep structures rizomatiche che, per quanto ti appaiano come altrettante epifanie della differanza grammatologica e inviti alla deriva decostruttiva – ma peggio ancora sarebbe se risultassero eccepibili allo scrutinio di chi legga con acribia ecdotica – eccedano comunque le competente cognitive del destinatario.39. Non devi essere prolisso, ma neppure devi dire meno di quello che.40. Una frase compiuta deve avere.”

“This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain.”

“A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.”

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

“Whoever reflects on four things I would be better if he were never born: that which is above, that which is below, that which is before, that which is after.”

“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.”

“Jacopo Belbo didn't understand that he had had his moment and that it would have to be enough for him, for all his life. Not recognizing it, he spent the rest of his days seeking something else, until he damned himself. ”

“Hay cosas que ves venir, no es que te enamores porque te enamoras, te enamoras porque en ese período tenías una desesperada necesidad de enamorarte. En los períodos en que tienes ganas de enamorarte debes fijarte bien dónde te metes: como haber bebido un filtro, de esos que hacen que uno se enamore del primero que pasa. Podría ser un ornitorrinco.”

“What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss.”

“Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the pace; otherwise you stop right away.”

“In the Middle Ages, cathedrals and convents burned like tinder; imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a World War II movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in flames.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.”

“Hoy en día no nos damos cuenta que la cualidad única de una obra de arte no hay que buscarla en una idea concebida por acto de gracia e independiente de la experiencia de la naturaleza: en el arte convergen todas nuestras experiencias vividas, elaboradas y resumidas según los normales procesos imaginativos, salvo que lo que hace única la obra es el modo en el que esta elaboración se vuelve concreta y se ofrece a la percepción, a través de un proceso de interacción entre experiencia vivida, voluntad de arte y legalidad autónoma del material sobre el que se trabaja.”

“Todo concepto filosófico, tomado en su sentido más genérico, explica cualquier cosa.”

“El alma humana es la verdadera cópula del mundo porque, por un lado, se dirige hacia lo divino y, por el otro, se introduce en el cuerpo y domina la naturaleza.”

“The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.”

“...we never cease hoping--and thus did our Judge condemn us to suffer in saecula.'Ferrante asked: 'But what is it that you hope for?'You might as well ask what you will hope for yourself. ...You will hope that a wisp of wind, the slightest swell of the tide, the arrival of a single hungry leech, can return us, atom by atom, to the great Void of the Universe, where we would somehow again participate in the cycle of life.”

“...I am not I who thinks,but I am the Void, or extension, that thinks me. And so this composite is an accident, in which Void and extension linger for the blink of an eye, to be able afterwards to return to thinking otherwise. In this great Void of the Void, the one thing that truly is, is the history of this evolution in numberless transitory compositions...Compositions of what? Of the one great Nothingness, which is the substance of the whole.Substance governed by a majestic necessity, which leads it to create and destroy worlds, to weave our pale lives. I must accept this, succeed in loving this Necessity, return to it, and bow to its future will, for this is the condition of Happiness. Only by accepting its law will I find my freedom. To flow back into It will be Salvation, fleeing from passions into the sole passion, the Intellectual Love of God. If I truly succeeded in understanding this, I would be the one man who has found the True Philosophy, and I would know everything about the God that is hidden. But who would have the heart to go about the world and proclaim such a philosophy? This is the secret I will carry with me to my grave, in the Antipodes.”

“...living the same sorrows three times was a suffering, but it was a suffering to relive even the same joys. The joy of life is born from feeling, whether it be joy or grief, always of short duration, and woe to those who know they will enjoy eternal bliss.”

“Here he was holding the clear proof of the existence of other skies, but at the same time without having to ascend beyond the celestial spheres, for he intuited many worlds in a piece of coral. Was there any need to calculate the number of forms which the atoms of the Universe could create--burning at the stake all those who said their number was not finite--when it sufficed to meditate for years on one of these marine objects to realize how the deviation of a single atom, whether willed by God or prompted by Chance, could generate inconceivable Milky Ways?”

“...we can only add to the world, where we believe it ends, more parts similar to those we already know (an expanse made again and always of water and land, stars and skies).”

“But Roberto already knew what the Jesuit's real objection would be. Like that of the abbe on that evening of the duel when Saint-Savin provoked him: If there are infinite worlds, the Redemption can no longer have any meaning, and we are obliged either to imagine infinite Calvaries or to look on our terrestrial flowerbed as a priveleged spot of the Cosmos, on which God permitted His Son to descend and free us from sin, while the other worlds were not granted this grace--to the discredit of His infinite goodness. ”

“I seem to know all the cliches, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely because all the cliches intertwine in an unrealistic way and you can't disentangle them. But when you actually live a cliche, it feels brand new, and you are unashamed.”

“He thought he would become accustomed to the idea, not yet understanding that it is useless to become accustomed to the loss of a father, for it will never happen a second time: might as well leave the wound open. ”

“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.”

“Idiot. Above her head was the only stable point in the cosmos, the only refuge from the damnation of the panta rei, and she guessed it was the Pendulum's business. A moment later the couple went off -- he, trained on some textbook that had blunted his capacity for wonder, she, inert and insensitive to the thrill of the infinite, both oblivious of the awesomeness of their encounter -- their first and last encounter -- with the One, the Ein-Sof, the Ineffable. How could you fail to kneel down before this altar of certitude?”

“I felt like poisoning a monk.”

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