The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.
Umberto EcoRead
Homer's work hits again and again on the topos of the inexpressible. People will always do that.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Umberto Eco reflects on the limitations of language and the enduring human struggle to express the inexpressible.
In this quote, Umberto Eco emphasizes the idea that throughout history, writers and thinkers like Homer grapple with the concept of the inexpressible, which refers to thoughts, emotions, or experiences that are difficult or impossible to articulate fully. This idea suggests that no matter how much language evolves, the deep complexities of human experience will always present challenges in expression, highlighting a fundamental aspect of our nature as we attempt to communicate the profound and often ineffable aspects of life.
Themes
LanguageInexpressibleCommunicationExperienceHumanity
In practice
Example use cases
A writer could use this quote to open a discussion about the challenges of poetry and prose at a literary conference.
More from Umberto Eco
All quotes βI 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.
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But why do some people support [the heretics]?" "Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power." "Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?" "That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.
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You die, but most of what you have accumulated will not be lost; you are leaving a message in a bottle.
Umberto EcoRead
"Then we are living in a place abandoned by God," I said, disheartened. "Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?" William asked me, looking down from his great height.
Umberto EcoRead
The lunatic is all idΓ©e fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.
Umberto EcoRead
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One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero.
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Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness β as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne β and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.
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The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.
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Your soul has a single basic function-the act of valuing.
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And so man, as existing transcendence abounding in and surpassing toward possibilities, is a creature of distance. Only through the primordial distances he establishes toward all being in his transcendence does a true nearness to things flourish in him.
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