More from Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, a very quotable novel, as it turns out:
Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another’s fear.
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We know things better through love than through knowledge. [A translation from the Latin of Thomas Aquinas: Amor est magis cognitivus quam cognitio.]
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“In Paris do they always have the true answers?”
“Never,” William said, “but they are very sure of their errors.”
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Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means….
Yet again, no fresh poems this week. But I do have this one, a few years old, undertaken as an exercise. I know it’s not very good, and yet I like it. What does that mean, I wonder….
Watch
The second hand sweeps;
the minute hand merely creeps;
the hour hand seems to sleep,
but no: the hours like slow
tears fall; the sweet days go;
years flow away—shallow
words whose truth runs deep:
the watch shall never keep
what we want it to keep.