Elias Canetti Quotes

A head full of stars, just not in constellation yet.

In eternity everything is just beginning.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure.

Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deaf

You draw closer to truth by shutting yourself off from mankind.

Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence.

Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous.

History portrays everything as if it could not have come otherwise. History is on the side of what happened.

People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation.

A person often falls very ill in order to become someone else and then returns to health much disappointed.

Explain nothing. Put it there. Say it. Leave.

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.

There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight

When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about

I would like to become tolerant without overlooking anything, persecute no one even when all people persecute me; become better without noticing it; become sadder, but enjoy living; become more serene, be happy in others; belong to no one, grow in everyone; love the best, comfort the worst; not even hate myself anymore.

Most religions do not make men better, only warier.

Almost Kien was tempted to believe in happiness, that contemptible life-goal of illiterates. If it came of itself, without being hunted for, if you did not hold it fast by force and treated it with a certain condescension, it was permissible to endure its presence for a few days

As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.

Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.

It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite… The reversal of fear of being touched belongs to the nature of crowds. The feeling of relief is most striking where the density of the crowd is greatest

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.

In five minutes the earth would be a desert, and you cling to books.

It is important to say all the great thoughts again, without knowing that they have already been said.

I want to keep smashing myself until I am whole.

There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.

Travelling, one accepts everything; indignation stays at home. One looks, one listens, one is roused to enthusiasm by the most dreadful things because they are new. Good travellers are heartless.

Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.

Slumbering in every human being lies an infinity of possibilities, which one must not arouse in vain. For it is terrible when the whole man resonates with echoes and echoes, none becoming a real voice.

It is important what a man still plans at the end. It shows the measure of injustice in his death.

One should use praise to recognize what one is not.

I cannot become modest; too many things burn in me; the old solutions are falling apart; nothing has been done yet with the new ones. So I begin, everywhere at once, as if I had a century ahead of me.

Learning is the art of ignoring.

You have but to know an object by its proper name for it to lose its dangerous magic.

Everything one records contains a grain of hope, no matter how deeply it may come from despair.

There emanates from superlatives a destructive force.

He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.

His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations.

There can be no Creator, simply because his grief at the fate of his creation would be inconceivable and unendurable.

It is always the enemy who started it, even if he was not the first to speak out, he was certainly planning it; and if he was not actually planning it, he was thinking of it; and, if he was not thinking of it, he would have thought of it.

...how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?

Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster. Otherwise, why do so many people walk upright and with open eyes into their misfortune?

Of all the words in all languages I know, the greatest concentration is in the English word I.

The fear of burglars is not only the fear of being robbed, but also the fear of a sudden and unexpected clutch out of the darkness.

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.

The self- explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. He learns to see himself, but suddenly, provided he was honest, all the rest appears, and it is as rich as he was, and, as a final crowning, richer.

Speak as though it were the last sentence allowed you.