Umberto Eco

Famous quotes by Umberto Eco:

"Translation is the art of failure."

"If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that's credulity"

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

"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."

"Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them."

"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."

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

"Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear."

"There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him."

"The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, ''I love you madly,'' because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, ''As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.''"

"The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it."

Latest News for: Umberto eco

Edit

Canada’s ‘China Syndrome’

GlobalResearch 20 Mar 2023

In an essay published in the New York Review of Books, Umberto Eco outlined the 14 typical elements of fascist societies, one of which seems amply demonstrated by our present ‘China syndrome.’ Eco wrote that fascist societies portray their enemies as being simultaneously both ...

Edit

Book snobs, be damned! The joys of commercial fiction

RTE 11 Mar 2023

I am not a fast reader ... If you saw that bedside table pile, you might furrow your brow. In my 'to-read’ pile lie memoirs by Mariah Carey, Bono and Sinead O’Connor; Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot; Liz Nugent’s new one Strange Sally Diamond; Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and Truckers, the first book in Terry Pratchett’s Nome trilogy ... Enid Blyton’s Mr ... .

Edit

Dissatisfaction, the great teacher and muse of fire | MARK HUGHES COBB

Tuscaloosa News 08 Mar 2023

It wasn't until I grew up that I realized teachers were people. Sometimes smart. Often well-read, learned (the Shakespearean learn-ED adjective, not the verb) humans. Motivators and leaders, role models and inspirations. Three revelations ... To anchor the desk, Iain Pears' "An Instance of the Fingerpost," and Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum ." ... Imposter.

Edit

Front Porch: One month is too small to hold all the love readers feel for libraries

The Spokesman-Review 02 Mar 2023

It’s not February anymore, so technically Library Lovers Month is over, but I didn’t have enough space in my last column to highlight reader responses. That’s the thing about book lovers – we always have something to talk about ... Kenyon Fields’ love of libraries led to an enduring affection for “The Name of the Rose,” by Umberto Eco ... .

Edit

Save these words! The English language in all its rugose richness: Michael Laser

Cleveland 01 Mar 2023

MONTCLAIR, New Jersey -- “You mendacious miscreant! You merciless myrmidon! You pallid pilgarlic!”. If these words are familiar to you, I’ll bet you’re smiling. If you’ve never seen them before, you may think I’m pretentious and annoying ... That’s how it was for me ... • “Umberto Eco’s Nonita is an amusing bagatelle that spoofs Lolita by inverting it ... ....

Edit

‘I’m a film-maker because of him’: Herzog, Swinton, Rushdie and more on Tom Luddy, cinema’s quiet titan

The Observer 21 Feb 2023

Almost 50 years ago, Tom Luddy co-founded the Telluride film festival, a small and enormously influential long weekend that takes place every year over the Labor Day weekend high in the Colorado mountains. Telluride is not like other film festivals ... If not. no chance ... Photograph ... This is Not the End of the Book by Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière ... .

Edit

AI and the Transformation of the Human Spirit

Quillette 13 Feb 2023

The human approach to computers has long been to sniff that we are still superior because only we can ___ (fill in the blank). The objection goes back to the mathematician, and Countess of Lovelace, Ada King in the 19th century ... Bespoke conspiracy theories with the complexity and believability of an Umberto Eco novel will be generated on demand ... .

Edit

ASAHI HAIKUIST NETWORK/ David McMurray

Asahi News 02 Feb 2023

unusually quiet morning a crow caws thrice. --Jerome Berglund (Minneapolis, Minnesota). * * *. winter dawn--. two crows on a bare branch. waiting for godot. --Deborah A. Bennett (Carbondale, Illinois). * * *. birds sing at sunrise ... --J.D ... * * * ... * * * ... Simona Brinzaru walked in the darkness of Bucharest, Romania, after reading Umberto Eco’s “Fictional Woods .” ... .

Edit

Review: ‘Cairo Conspiracy’ mixes religion and politics in a compelling thriller

The Los Angeles Times 27 Jan 2023

For your safety ... There may be a whiff of Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” in the air, but the Stockholm-born Saleh, who first made a name for himself as one of Sweden’s most prominent graffiti artists, steers clear of splashy reveals, allowing the storyline to build to an intense simmer without boiling over into more conventional stuff ... 2 hours.

Edit

Letter to the editor: Credulity

Missoulian 26 Jan 2023

However, American critic, and biographer Carl Clinton Van Doren (1885-1950) stated that “the race of man, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity.” Italian philosopher, novelist and political commentator Umberto Eco (1932-2016) postulated of the workings of it in “if ...

Edit

012623-mis-opn-beller_merged

Missoulian 26 Jan 2023

Edit

German widower leaves collection of 70,000 books

The Times/The Sunday Times 24 Jan 2023

The Italian writer Umberto Eco accumulated more than 30,000, converting an old hotel into a private library ... .

Edit

Debut collection takes on the past, identity and the roots of selfhood

The Keene Sentinel 14 Jan 2023

Hoover seems certain of the answer; the smattered beautiful bursts of plainly stated biographical moments (“Once I fell / in love with a woman who’d been a thief”; “I’ve always wanted / a boyfriend like you language making it impossible / for her to love me back” interspersed ...

Edit

Will AI Make Creative Workers Redundant?

Wall Street Journal 10 Jan 2023

When one of my colleagues asked ChatGPT for a 250-word summary of Umberto Eco’s philosophy of translation, it produced a text that would put many educated adults to shame—and it did so within seconds ... .

Edit

The Written and the Unwritten World by Italo Calvino: a great mind at work

The Times/The Sunday Times 08 Jan 2023

Before Elena Ferrante, Calvino, alongside Umberto Eco, was the most famous modern Italian writer in the Anglosphere ... Yet most of the pieces in TheSponsored. .