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"The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless."
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"Lack of sound mind and judgement - the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions, is a matter of frustration and disillusionment to God."

"Understanding moulds the life of a man and governs it."

"Virtues are common, but the virtuous are very few. This is because ordinarily, people know but do not apply what they know. To break the culture, look for more information; learn more and apply more. This is wisdom."

"Practice what you preach and let people learn from you."

"Being broken is to try break a law."

"A cat may have nine lives, but a wise person has a hundred."

"Pleasure is a kind servant, but a cruel master."
Explore more quotes by Umberto Eco


"When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love."


"All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful."


"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."


"Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings."


"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 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."


"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."


"I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly."


"I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed."


"History is rich with adventurous men, long on charisma, with a highly developed instinct for their own interests, who have pursued personal power - bypassing parliaments and constitutions, distributing favours to their minions, and conflating their own desires with the interests of the community."
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