Umberto Eco Quotes

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

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.

Verba vana aut risui apta non loqui.[Trans.]Do not speak words that are vain or give rise to laughter.

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.

Monasterium sine libris est sicut civitas sine opibus, castrum sine numeris, coquina sine suppellectili, mensa sine cibis, hortus sine herbis, pratum sine floribus, arbor sine foliis…[Trans.]A monastery without books is like a city without resources, a fortress without numbers, [i.e. troops] a kitchen without utensils, a table without food, a garden without plants, a meadow without flowers, a tree without leaves…

The city is the place where today live the people of God, of whom you, we, are the shepherds. It is the place of scandal in which the rich prelates preach virtue to poor and hungry people.

Stultus in risu exaltat vocem suam.[Trans.]The fool raises his voice in laughter.

Often the treasures of learning must be defended, not against the simple but, rather, against other learned men.

Learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.

It is always better when the person who frightens us is also afraid of us.

He who laughs does not believe in what he laughs at, but neither does he hate it. Therefore, laughing at evil means not preparing oneself to combat it, and laughing at good means denying the power through which good is self-propagating.

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