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.
More Quotes from Umberto Eco:
The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.Umberto Eco
Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.
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The truth is a young maiden as modest as she is beautiful, and therefore she is always seen cloaked.'
Umberto Eco
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.''
Umberto Eco
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.
Umberto Eco
Better reality than a dream: if something is real, then it's real and you're not to blame.
Umberto Eco
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Based on Topics: Heaven Quotes, Hell Quotes, Mind Quotes, Pain Quotes, Pleasure QuotesBased on Keywords: arouses, diabolical, grasses, inquisitor, transported
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