The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.
Umberto EcoRead
I felt no passion, no jealousy, no nostalgia. I was hollow, clear-headed, clean, and as emotionless as an aluminum pot.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses a state of emotional emptiness and clarity.
Umberto Eco reflects on a profound sense of emotional detachment, where he feels devoid of typical passionate responses such as jealousy or nostalgia. This metaphorical comparison to an 'aluminum pot' suggests a stark, unfeeling, and transparent state of mind, implying a search for clarity in the absence of emotional turmoil.
Themes
EmotionDetachmentClarityEmptinessPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about emotional resilience, one might quote Eco to illustrate the concept of emotional detachment.
More from Umberto Eco
All quotes →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.
Umberto EcoRead
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.
Umberto EcoRead
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 idée 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
Similar quotes
Pride is one of the socially acceptable sins in some corners of the evangelical culture. It's just straight-out ego gratification - how important I am; whether my name gets on the building or on the TV program or in the magazine article.
Richard FosterRead
Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it's some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don't know nothin' but what we see.
Zora Neale HurstonRead
War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either.
Milan KunderaRead
Fear drives the wretched to prayer
Seneca The YoungerRead
I'm like everyone else—I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does.
Paulo CoelhoRead
Tessa was convinced that it was a lie, and also that everything she had done in her life, telling herself that it was for the best, had been no more than blind selfishness, generating confusion and mess all around. But who could bear to know which stars were already dead, she thought, blinking up at the night sky; could anybody stand to know they all were?
J. K. RowlingRead