I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

About Umberto Eco

Portrait of Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel The Name of the Rose, a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval...

More quotations from Umberto Eco

But the important thing is not the finding. It is the seeking. It is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it, because your heart would not have been purified by the long quest.

Our heroes are people and people are flawed. Don't let that taint the thing you love.

I felt like poisoning a monk.

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.

More quotations tagged with “mystery”

Reality, no matter how widened and heightened our perceptions, never ceases to be anything but the effect on us of an infinite mystery.

—Laurens Van der Post

reality perception mystery

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

—Francis Bacon

True myths may serve for thousands of years as an inexhaustible source of intellectual speculation, religious joy, ethical inquiry, and artistic renewal. The real mystery is not destroyed by reason. The fake one is. You look at it and it vanishes. You look at the Blond Hero—really look—and he turns into a gerbil. But you look at Apollo, and he looks back at you. The poet Rilke looked at a statue of Apollo about fifty years ago, and Apollo spoke to him. "You must change your life," he said. When the true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message: "You must change your life.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

life religion change myth mystery art reason consciousness reflection inquiry

Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.

—René Magritte

existence world mystery art

I have learned that no matter how much I learn about anything, I am always at 'the threshold of ignorance,' a frontier of inner and outer awareness (and lack of it) in which some things have become second nature, some things are new and a little uncomfortable, and some things are a complete mystery.

awareness ignorance learning mystery habit comfort

History

23 Nov 2015 Added