The cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopedia.
Umberto EcoThe light in her eyes was beyond description, yet it did not instill improper thoughts: it inspired a love tempered by awe, purifying the hearts it inflamed.
Umberto EcoThe mobile phone... is a tool for those whose professions require a fast response, such as doctors or plumbers.
Umberto EcoThere are more people than you think who want to have a challenging experience, in which they are obliged to reflect about the past.
Umberto EcoThe 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