Baudolino Quotes

“What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“There, Master Niketas,’ Baudolino said, ‘when I was not prey to the temptations of this world, I devoted my nights to imagining other worlds. A bit with the help of wine, and a bit with that of the green honey. There is nothing better than imagining other worlds,’ he said, ‘to forget the painful one we live in. At least so I thought then. I hadn’t yet realized that, imagining other worlds, you end up changing this one.”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“The good thing about the studium is the that you learn from your teachers, true, but even more from your fellows, especially those older than you, when they tell you what they have read, and you discover that the world must be full of wondrous things and to know them all - since a lifetime will not be a enough for you to travel through the whole world - you can only read all the books.”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“There is nothing better than imagining other worlds,” he said, “to forget the painful one we live in. At least so I thought then. I hadn’t yet realized that, imagining other worlds, you end up changing this one.”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino: A Novel

“and I said to him when you learn to read then you learn everything you didnt know before. But when you write you write only what you know allready so patientia Im better off not knowing how to write because the ass is the ass”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“God is a lamp without flame, a flame without fire, a fire without heat, a dark light, a silent rumble, a blind flash, a luminous soot, a ray of his own darkness, a circle that expands concentrating on its own center, a solitary multiplicity...”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“Tüm aşıklar gibi Baudlino da kibirli olmuştu.”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“Farewell to all of you, my remaining friends. Not infrequently it has been beautiful to dream with you.”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“Try to understand, Baudolino: God is a lamp without flame, a flame without fire, a fire without heat, a dark light, a silent rumble, a blind flash, a luminous soot, a ray of his own darkness, a circle that expands concentrating on its own center, a solitary multiplicity; He is a space that is not, in which you and I are the same thing, as we are today in this time that doesn't flow.”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“Why do you say that freedom is good?"
"Because if they deprive you of it, if they put you in chains, if they will not allow you to do what you wish, you suffer, and therefore the absence of freedom is an evil.”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“I saw something ancient, because I knew I was not seeing something beautiful, but beauty itself, like the holy thought of God. I was discovering that perfection, even glimpsing it once, and once only, was something light and lovely. I looked at that form from the distance, but I felt that I had no hold on that image, as happens when you are on in years and you seem to glimpse clear signs on a parchment, but you know that the moment you move closer they will blur, and you will never be able to read the secret that the page was promising you - or, as in dreams, when something you desire appears to you, you reach out, move your fingers in the void, and grasp nothing.”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“We believe that we, only we, need God, but often God needs us. At that moment I believed it was necessary to help Him.”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“Would you deny an exile the final delicacies of its homeland as it is dying?”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“Quando reina a anarquia, qualquer um pode se fazer rei.”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“Somos nós que, diante dos opostos, acreditamos, conforme o nosso desejo, e a nossa paixão, que um deles seja o bem e o outro o mal.”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“By the Virgin Mother of God!" Baudolino exclaimed. "That worm story was told me by Zosimos! And it was Zosimos who also told me that, according to Cosmos Indicopleustes, in India horses don't exist! And it was Zosimos who told me of methagallinarii and those other beasts! Son of a whore, pot of excrement, liar, thief, hypocrite, trimmer and counterfeiter, adulterer, glutton, coward, voluptuary, sodomite, usurer, simoniac, necromancer sower of discord, cheat!”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“And so it was that the Poet, through an excess of theological refinement, was unable to satisfy his coarse carnal passion.”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino