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"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."
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"Reading doesn't mean accepting everything you read, it means reasoning everything you read."

"Failure is the school of greatness."

"Experience is a master teacher, even when it's not our own."

"[A]t bottom it is the same with traveling as with reading. How often do we complain that we cannot remember one thousandth part of what we read! In both cases, however, we may console ourselves with the reflection that the things we see and read make an impression on the mind before they are forgotten, and so contribute to its formation and nurture."

"Self-education begins with the passion to read the Scriptures."

"Curiosity killed the cat, but not before teaching her that honey bees are not sweet, tweeting birds are slow to react, mice can serve as both toys and food, big dogs like to snuggle, falling isn't flying, cream drips from lazy cows, water should be avoided at all costs, baths don't require getting wet, kindness and cruelty often fall from the same hand, and engines remain comfortably warm long after the motor dies."

"Learn to let urgency go. Nothing is urgent. Stress is the product of uncertainty and urgency of life."
Explore more quotes by Umberto Eco


"Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages... all forms of communication - visual, tactile, and so on... There is general semiotics, which is a philosophical approach to this field, and then there are many specific semiotics."


"The more things you know, or pretend to know, the more powerful you are. It doesn't matter if things are true. What counts, remember, is to possess a secret."


"When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything."


"There, Master Niketas,' Baudolino said, 'when I was not prey to the temptations of this world, I devoted my nights to imagining other worlds. A bit with the help of wine, and a bit with that of the green honey. There is nothing better than imagining other worlds,' he said, 'to forget the painful one we live in. At least so I thought then. I hadn't yet realized that, imagining other worlds, you end up changing this one."


"You are always born under the wrong sign, and to live in this world properly you have to rewrite your own horoscope day by day."


"Sometimes you say things with a smile with the precise intention of making it clear that you are not being serious, and are only kidding. If I salute a friend with a smile and say, 'How are you, you old scoundrel!' clearly I don't really mean he's a scoundrel."


"There is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in every direction, but I find they have less horror when among them than when in anticipation."


"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."


"A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection - not an invitation for hypnosis."
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