The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.
Umberto EcoRead
I think of myself as a serious professor who, during the weekend, writes novels.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the duality of the author's identity as both an academic and a creative writer.
Umberto Eco describes his self-perception as a serious academic during the week, while also embracing his creative side as a novelist on the weekends. This highlights the balance between professional responsibility and personal passion, suggesting that one can pursue multiple identities and interests in life.
Themes
IdentityCreativityBalanceAcademicWriter
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about managing different roles in life.
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.
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 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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We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush, We are but critics, or but half create.
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Writing fiction is an inherently political activity because people-even imaginary ones-do not live in vacuums... From Twilight to Romeo and Juliet to The Little Mermaid, no work of the imagination is truly apolitical, because the world and our hopes for it are always part of our stories.
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There are likewise three kinds of dancers: first, those who consider dancing as a sort of gymnastic drill, made up of impersonal and graceful arabesques; second, those who, by concentrating their minds, lead the body into the rhythm of a desired emotion, expressing a remembered feeling or experience. And finally, there are those who convert the body into a luminous fluidity, surrendering it to the inspiration of the soul.
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If you watch any good player, they're using different parts of their body and working with instruments that respond to those movements. They're moving in many dimensions at once.
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