Umberto Eco Quotes

Umberto Eco OMRI was an Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician, and university professor. He is best known internationally for his 1980 novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory. He later wrote other novels, including Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum) and L'isola del giorno prima (The Island of the Day Before). His novel Il cimitero di Praga (The Prague Cemetery), released in 2010, topped the bestseller charts in Italy. ...more

Birth: January 05, 1932 - Death: February 19, 2016

There are two kinds of friendship: one is genuine affection, the other is inability to refuse.

By means of the sign, man frees himself from the here and now for abstraction.

Topic(s): Men , Mean , Abstraction

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

Topic(s): Book , Morning , Smell

I felt no passion, no jealousy, no nostalgia. I was hollow, clear-headed, clean, and as emotionless as an aluminum pot.

Topic(s): Passion , Felt , Clear

My father was an accountant and his father was a typographer.

Topic(s): Father , Accountants

How beautiful was the spectacle of nature not yet touched by the often perverse wisdom of man!

Topic(s): Men , Beautiful , Touched

I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.

Topic(s): Weakness , Wicked

Conspiracies and all the theories of conspiracy are a part of the canon of fakes. And I’m involved, in all of my writings, the theoretical ones as well as the novels, with the production of fakes.