# The Name of the Rose Tags: #literature ## Metadata * Author: [Umberto Eco and William Weaver](https://www.amazon.comundefined) * ASIN: B003WUYPTC * Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003WUYPTC * [Kindle link](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC) ## Highlights “In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro.” — location: [146](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=146) ^ref-10209 --- I did not then know what Brother William was seeking, and to tell the truth, I still do not know today, and I presume he himself did not know, moved as he was solely by the desire for truth, and by the suspicion—which I could see he always harbored—that the truth was not what was appearing to him at that moment. — location: [220](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=220) ^ref-9596 --- as Boethius says, nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn; and what would be the point of saying today that the abbot Abo had a stern eye and pale cheeks, when by now he and those around him are dust and their bodies have the mortal grayness of dust (only their souls, God grant, shining with a light that will never be extinguished)? — location: [231](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=231) ^ref-33021 --- The young no longer want to study anything, learning is in decline, the whole world walks on its head, blind men lead others equally blind and cause them to plunge into the abyss, birds leave the nest before they can fly, the jackass plays the lyre, oxen dance. Mary no longer loves the contemplative life and Martha no longer loves the active life, Leah is sterile, Rachel has a carnal eye, Cato visits brothels. — location: [239](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=239) ^ref-43963 Lol. Doommongering prick! --- One day I found him strolling in the flower garden without any apparent aim, as if he did not have to account to God for his works. In my order they had taught me quite a different way of expending my time, and I said so to him. And he answered that the beauty of the cosmos derives not only from unity in variety, but also from variety in unity. — location: [263](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=263) ^ref-23999 --- I will tell, in fact, how this strange man carried with him, in his bag, instruments that I had never seen before then, which he called his “wondrous machines.” Machines, he said, are an effect of art, which is nature’s ape, and they reproduce not its forms but the operation itself. He explained to me thus the wonders of the clock, the astrolabe, and the magnet. — location: [270](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=270) ^ref-60951 --- “Roger Bacon, whom I venerate as my master, teaches that the divine plan will one day encompass the science of machines, which is natural and healthy magic. And one day it will be possible, by exploiting the power of nature, to create instruments of navigation by which ships will proceed unico homine regente, and far more rapid than those propelled by sails or oars; and there will be wagons that move without animals to pull them, and flying vehicles guided by a man who will flap their wings as if they were those of a bird. And tiny contraptions that lift infinite weights, and small boats that float on the bottom of the sea.” — location: [276](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=276) ^ref-62542 --- It is also true that in those dark times a wise man had to believe things that were in contradiction among themselves. — location: [287](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=287) ^ref-52828 --- His explanation, moreover, seemed to me at that point so obvious that my humiliation at not having discovered it by myself was surpassed only by my pride at now being a sharer in it, and I was almost congratulating myself on my insight. Such is the power of the truth that, like good, it is its own propagator. — location: [362](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=362) ^ref-43320 --- “when you read the prints in the snow and the evidence of the branches, you did not yet know Brunellus. In a certain sense those prints spoke of all horses, or at least all horses of that breed. Mustn’t we say, then, that the book of nature speaks to us only of essences, as many distinguished theologians teach?” — location: [404](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=404) ^ref-36507 --- I found myself halfway between the perception of the concept ‘horse’ and the knowledge of an individual horse. — location: [408](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=408) ^ref-20761 Yes, this distinction between the universal essence of the species and the unique creature. Interesting --- On other occasions I had heard him speak with great skepticism about universal ideas and with great respect about individual things; — location: [419](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=419) ^ref-50023 --- Acute in uncovering, and prudent (if necessary) in covering. If a shepherd errs, he must be isolated from other shepherds, but woe unto us if the sheep begin to distrust shepherds.” — location: [439](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=439) ^ref-24455 Clever! --- We are already hard put to establish a relationship between such an obvious effect as a charred tree and the lightning bolt that set fire to it, so to trace sometimes endless chains of causes and effects seems to me as foolish as trying to build a tower that will touch the sky. — location: [451](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=451) ^ref-54362 --- perhaps the only real proof of the presence of the Devil was the intensity with which everyone at that moment desired to know he was at work. . . .” — location: [463](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=463) ^ref-60579 --- But we live now in very dark times, the people of God are now inclined to commerce and wars of faction; down below in the great settlements, where the spirit of sanctity can find no lodging, not only do they speak (of laymen, nothing else could be expected) in the vulgar tongue, but they are already writing in it, though none of these volumes will ever come within our walls—fomenter of heresies as those volumes inevitably become! — location: [550](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=550) ^ref-21707 --- Because not all truths are for all ears, not all falsehoods can be recognized as such by a pious soul; and the monks, finally, are in the scriptorium to carry out a precise task, which requires them to read certain volumes and not others, and not to pursue every foolish curiosity that seizes them, whether through weakness of intellect or through pride or through diabolical prompting.” — location: [572](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=572) ^ref-11648 --- even in books of falsehood, to the eyes of the sage reader, a pale reflection of the divine wisdom can shine. — location: [579](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=579) ^ref-27643 --- because in every human language there are rules and every term signifies ad placitum a thing, according to a law that does not change, for man cannot call the dog once dog and once cat, or utter sounds to which a consensus of people has not assigned a definite meaning, — location: [724](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=724) ^ref-61520 --- What I meant is that there is little difference between the ardor of the seraphim and the ardor of Lucifer, because they are always born from an extreme igniting of the will.” — location: [899](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=899) ^ref-64883 --- I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.” — location: [938](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=938) ^ref-48280 --- “I know nothing. There is nothing that I know. But the heart senses certain things. — location: [951](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=951) ^ref-40174 --- I have seen at other times and in other places many scriptoria, but none where there shone so luminously, in the outpouring of physical light which made the room glow, the spiritual principle that light incarnates, radiance, source of all beauty and learning, inseparable attribute of that proportion the room embodied. — location: [1119](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=1119) ^ref-61742 --- And since the sight of the beautiful implies peace, and since our appetite is calmed similarly by peacefulness, by the good, and by the beautiful, I felt myself filled with a great consolation and I thought how pleasant it must be to work in that place. — location: [1123](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=1123) ^ref-17365 --- But it has often happened that I have found the most seductive depictions of sin in the pages of those very men of incorruptible virtue who condemned their spell and their effects. A sign that these men are impelled by such eagerness to bear witness to the truth that they do not hesitate, out of love of God, to confer on evil all the seductions in which it cloaks itself; — location: [1277](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=1277) ^ref-2374 --- “You can certainly speak of magic in this device,” William allowed. “But there are two forms of magic. There is a magic that is the work of the Devil and which aims at man’s downfall through artifices of which it is not licit to speak. But there is a magic that is divine, where God’s knowledge is made manifest through the knowledge of man, and it serves to transform nature, and one of its ends is to prolong man’s very life. And this is holy magic, to which the learned must devote themselves more and more, not only to discover new things but also to rediscover many secrets of nature that divine wisdom had revealed to the Hebrews, the Greeks, to other ancient peoples, and even, today, to the infidels — location: [1372](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=1372) ^ref-33508 --- “As far as simple people are concerned, my only fear is that they may be terrified by them, confusing them with those works of the Devil of which their preachers speak too often. — location: [1387](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=1387) ^ref-36989 --- “Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.” — location: [1532](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=1532) ^ref-20962 --- I was speaking really of this: when the epoch of penitence was over, for penitents the need for penance became a need for death. And they who killed the crazed penitents, repaying death with death, to defeat true penitence, which produced death, replaced the penitence of the soul with a penitence of the imagination, a summons to supernatural visions of suffering and blood, calling them the ‘mirror’ of true penitence. A mirror that brings to life, for the imagination of the simple and sometimes even of the learned, the torments of hell. So that—it is said—no one shall sin. They hope to keep souls from sin through fear, and trust to replace rebellion with fear.” — location: [1829](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=1829) ^ref-13695 --- “In order for there to be a mirror of the world, it is necessary that the world have a form,” concluded William, who was too much of a philosopher for my adolescent mind. — location: [1845](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=1845) ^ref-7824 --- Among the cooks I saw Salvatore, who smiled at me with his wolf’s mouth. And I saw that he was taking from a table a scrap of chicken left over from the night before and stealthily passing it to the herdsmen, who hid the food in their sheepskin jerkins with pleased grins. But the chief cook noticed and scolded Salvatore. “You must look after the goods of the abbey, not squander them!” “Filii Dei they are,” said Salvatore, “Jesus has said that you do for him what you do for one of these pueri!” “Filthy Fraticello, fart of a Minorite!” the cook shouted at him. “You’re not among those louse-bitten friars of yours any more! The abbot’s charity will see to the feeding of the children of God!” — location: [1853](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=1853) ^ref-51829 --- And since today the flock here is dominated, not with weapons or the splendor of ritual, but with the control of money, Aymaro wants the whole fabric of the abbey, and the library itself, to become a workshop, a factory for making money.” — location: [1953](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=1953) ^ref-46823 --- “Baths are a good thing,” Jorge said, “and Aquinas himself advises them for dispelling sadness, which can be a bad passion when it is not addressed to an evil that can be dispelled through boldness. — location: [2021](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=2021) ^ref-37509 --- You may burn a cardinal’s house because you want to perfect the life of the clergy, but also because you believe that the hell he preaches does not exist. It is always done because on earth there does exist a hell, where lives the flock whose shepherds we no longer are. — location: [2353](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=2353) ^ref-21663 --- The simple are meat for slaughter, to be used when they are useful in causing trouble for the opposing power, and to be sacrificed when they are no longer of use.” — location: [2362](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=2362) ^ref-57034 --- Bacon was right in saying that the conquest of learning is achieved through the knowledge of languages. — location: [2566](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=2566) ^ref-1358 --- Here, I said to myself, is the greatness of our order: for centuries and centuries men like these have seen the barbarian hordes burst in, sack their abbeys, plunge kingdoms into chasms of fire, and yet they have gone on cherishing parchments and inks, have continued to read, moving their lips over words that have been handed down through centuries and which they will hand down to the centuries to come. They went on reading and copying as the millennium approached; why should they not continue to do so now? — location: [2796](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=2796) ^ref-55354 --- A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks. — location: [2801](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=2801) ^ref-925 --- For these men devoted to writing, the library was at once the celestial Jerusalem and an underground world on the border between terra incognita and Hades. They were dominated by the library, by its promises and by its prohibitions. They lived with it, for it, and perhaps against it, sinfully hoping one day to violate all its secrets. Why should they not have risked death to satisfy a curiosity of their minds, or have killed to prevent someone from appropriating a jealously guarded secret of their own? — location: [2806](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=2806) ^ref-15038 --- There, I said to myself, are the reasons for the silence and the darkness that surround the library: it is the preserve of learning but can maintain this learning unsullied only if it prevents its reaching anyone at all, even the monks themselves. — location: [2823](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=2823) ^ref-26829 --- this excess of possessive and curious love would make the book vulnerable to the disease destined to kill it. — location: [2831](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=2831) ^ref-13464 --- He replied that when your true enemies are too strong, you have to choose weaker enemies. I reflected that this is why the simple are so called. Only the powerful always know with great clarity who their true enemies are. — location: [2939](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=2939) ^ref-20278 --- In other words, you reproached Ubertino for considering different those who were basically the same, and the abbot for considering the same those who were basically different.” — location: [3003](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3003) ^ref-58930 --- “Then this means there is identity in different men as to their substantial form, and diversity as to the accidents, or as to their superficial shape.” — location: [3010](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3010) ^ref-25549 --- “When I say to Ubertino that human nature itself, in the complexity of its operations, governs both the love of good and the love of evil, I am trying to convince Ubertino of the identity of human nature. When I say to the abbot, however, that there is a difference between a Catharist and a Waldensian, I am insisting on the variety of their accidents. And I insist on it because a Waldensian may be burned after the accidents of a Catharist have been attributed to him, and vice versa. And when you burn a man you burn his individual substance and reduce to pure nothing that which was a concrete act of existing, hence in itself good, at least in the eyes of God, who kept him in existence. Does this seem to you a good reason for insisting on the differences?” — location: [3011](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3011) ^ref-59514 --- Imagine a river, wide and majestic, which flows for miles and miles between strong embankments, where the land is firm. At a certain point, the river, out of weariness, because its flow has taken up too much time and too much space, because it is approaching the sea, which annihilates all rivers in itself, no longer knows what it is, loses its identity. It becomes its own delta. A major branch may remain, but many break off from it in every direction, and some flow together again, into one another, and you can’t tell what begets what, and sometimes you can’t tell what is still river and what is already sea. . . .” — location: [3021](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3021) ^ref-1418 --- “God, how difficult it is. Very well. Imagine you are a reformer of morals and you collect some companions on a mountaintop, to live in poverty. And after a while you see that many come to you, even from distant lands, and they consider you a prophet, or a new apostle, and they follow you. Have they really come there for you or for what you say?” “I don’t know. I hope so. Why otherwise?” “Because from their fathers they have heard stories of other reformers, and legends of more or less perfect communities, and they believe this is that and that is this.” “And so every movement inherits the offspring of others?” “Of course, because the majority of those who flock after reformers are the simple, who have no subtlety of doctrine. And yet moral reform movements originate in different places and ways and with different doctrines. — location: [3040](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3040) ^ref-28502 --- “But why, then, are they confused and spoken of as the same evil weed?” “I told you: what makes them live is also what makes them die. The movements grow, gathering simple people who have been aroused by other movements and who believe all have the same impulse of revolt and hope; and they are destroyed by the inquisitors, who attribute to one the errors of the other, and if the sectarians of one movement commit a crime, this crime will be attributed to each sectarian of each movement. The inquisitors are mistaken, rationally speaking, because they lump contradictory doctrines together; they are right, according to others’ irrationality, because when a movement of, say, Arnoldists springs up in one city, it is swelled by those who would have been or have been Catharists or Waldensians elsewhere. Fra Dolcino’s Apostles preached the physical destruction of clerics and lords, and committed many acts of violence; the Waldensians are opposed to violence, and so are the Fraticelli. But I am sure that in Fra Dolcino’s day there were many in his group who had previously followed the preachings of the Fraticelli or the Waldensians. The simple cannot choose their personal heresy, Adso; they cling to the man preaching in their land, who passes through their village or stops in their square. This is what their enemies exploit. — location: [3054](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3054) ^ref-4493 --- I think the mistake is to believe that the heresy comes first, and then the simple folk who join it (and damn themselves for it). Actually, first comes the condition of being simple, then the heresy.” — location: [3068](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3068) ^ref-35552 --- The outcast lepers would like to drag everything down in their ruin. And they become all the more evil, the more you cast them out; and the more you depict them as a court of lemures who want your ruin, the more they will be outcast. Saint Francis realized this, and his first decision was to go and live among the lepers. The people of God cannot be changed until the outcasts are restored to its body.” — location: [3088](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3088) ^ref-36415 --- Francis wanted to call the outcast, ready to revolt, to be part of the people of God. If the flock was to be gathered again, the outcasts had to be found again. Francis didn’t succeed, and I say it with great bitterness. To recover the outcasts he had to act within the church, to act within the church he had to obtain the recognition of his rule, from which an order would emerge, and this order, as it emerged, would recompose the image of a circle, at whose margin the outcasts remain. — location: [3104](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3104) ^ref-49367 --- The powerful always knew this. Acknowledging the outcasts meant reducing their own privileges, so the outcasts who were acknowledged as outcasts had to be branded as heretics, whatever their doctrine. And for their part, maddened by their exclusion, they were not interested in any doctrine. This is the illusion of heresy. The faith a movement proclaims doesn’t count: what counts is the hope it offers. — location: [3115](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3115) ^ref-53290 --- “It is characteristic of heresy that it transforms the most upright thoughts and aims them at consequences contrary to the law of God. — location: [3508](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3508) ^ref-59829 --- And I saw the face of a man looking at something that is not of this earth, as I had sometimes seen on statues of saints in ecstatic vision. And I understood that, madman or seer as he might be, he knowingly wanted to die because he believed that in dying he would defeat his enemy, whoever it was. And I understood that his example would lead others to death. And I remain amazed by the possessors of such steadfastness only because I do not know, even today, whether what prevails in them is a proud love of the truth they believe, which leads them to death, or a proud desire for death, which leads them to proclaim their truth, whatever it may be. — location: [3668](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3668) ^ref-40868 --- “The flame consists of a splendid clarity, of an unusual vigor, and of an igneous ardor, but possesses the splendid clarity that it may illuminate and the igneous ardor that it may burn.” — location: [3696](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3696) ^ref-33742 --- At every moment I feared I would find myself before another mirror, because the magic of mirrors is such that even when you know they are mirrors they still upset you. — location: [3701](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3701) ^ref-30116 --- And then I realized why I linked the animal and the armored man so closely with the labyrinth: both illustrations, like all in that book, emerged from a pattern of interlocking labyrinths, which seemed all to refer to the tangle of rooms and corridors where I was. My eye became lost, on the page, along gleaming paths, as my feet were becoming lost in the troublous succession of the rooms of the library, and seeing my own wandering depicted on those parchments filled me with uneasiness and convinced me that each of those books was telling, through mysterious cachinnations, my present story. And I wondered if those pages did not already contain the story of future events in store for me. — location: [3721](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=3721) ^ref-63830 --- Years ago I believed in the ideal of poverty, and I abandoned the community to live as a vagabond. I believed in Dolcino’s preaching, as many others like me did. I’m not an educated man, I was born into a family of artisans and know little about theology. I don’t even know why I did what I did, then. You see, for Salvatore it was comprehensible: his parents were serfs, he came from a childhood of hardship and illness. . . . Dolcino represented rebellion against those who had starved him. For me it was different: I came from a city family, I wasn’t running away from hunger. It was—I don’t know how to say it—a feast of fools, a magnificent carnival. . . . On the mountains with Dolcino, before we were reduced to eating the flesh of our companions killed in battle, before so many died of hardship that we couldn’t eat them all, and they were thrown to the birds and the wild animals on the slopes of Rebello . . . or maybe in those moments, too . . . there was an atmosphere . . . can I say of freedom? I didn’t know, before, what freedom was; the preachers said to us, ‘The truth will make you free.’ We felt free, we thought that was the truth. We thought everything we were doing was right. . . .” — location: [4192](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=4192) ^ref-32984 --- And therefore what I suffered that morning was evil for me, but for others perhaps was good, the sweetest of good things; thus I understand now that my distress was not due to the depravity of my thoughts, in themselves worthy and sweet, but to the depravity of the gap between my thoughts and the vows I had pronounced. And therefore I was doing evil in enjoying something that was good in one situation, bad in another; and my fault lay in trying to reconcile natural appetite and the dictates of the rational soul. Now I know that I was suffering from the conflict between the elicit appetite of the intellect, in which the will’s rule should have been displayed, and the elicit appetite of the senses, subject to human passions. — location: [4308](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=4308) ^ref-28154 --- Now I know that good is cause of love and that which is good is defined by knowledge, and you can only love what you have learned is good, whereas I had, indeed, learned that the girl was the good of the irascible appetite, but the evil of the will. But I was in the grip of so many and such conflicting emotions, because what I felt was like the holiest love just as the doctors describe it: it produced in me that ecstasy in which lover and beloved want the same thing (and by mysterious enlightenment I, in that moment, knew that the girl, wherever she was, wanted the same things I myself wanted), and for her I felt jealousy, but not the evil kind, condemned by Paul in 1 Corinthians, but that which Dionysius speaks of in The Divine Names whereby God also is called jealous because of the great love He feels for all creation (and I loved the girl precisely because she existed, and I was happy, not envious, that she existed). I was jealous in the way in which, for the angelic doctor, jealousy is motus in amatum, the jealousy of friendship, which inspires us to move against all that harms the beloved (and I dreamed, at that moment, only of freeing the girl from the power of him who was buying her flesh and befouling it with his own infamous passions). — location: [4326](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=4326) ^ref-34248 --- I lost myself in the contemplation of nature, trying to forget my thoughts and to look only at beings as they appear, and to forget myself, joyfully, in the sight of them. How beautiful was the spectacle of nature not yet touched by the often perverse wisdom of man! — location: [4344](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=4344) ^ref-56903 --- “And is a library, then, an instrument not for distributing the truth but for delaying its appearance?” I asked, dumbfounded. “Not always and not necessarily. In this case it is.” — location: [4431](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=4431) ^ref-22459 --- Such is the magic of human languages, that by human accord often the same sounds mean different things. — location: [4453](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=4453) ^ref-15274 --- “And so you have worked hard, and for many months, to bring about something you believe futile,” Michael said bitterly. “I was asked to, by the Emperor and by you,” William said. “And ultimately it is never a futile thing to know one’s enemies better.” — location: [4632](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=4632) ^ref-59287 --- “Adso,” William said, “solving a mystery is not the same as deducing from first principles. Nor does it amount simply to collecting a number of particular data from which to infer a general law. It means, rather, facing one or two or three particular data apparently with nothing in common, and trying to imagine whether they could represent so many instances of a general law you don’t yet know, and which perhaps has never been pronounced. — location: [4696](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=4696) ^ref-22356 --- The others believed me wise because I won, but they didn’t know the many instances in which I have been foolish because I lost, and they didn’t know that a few seconds before winning I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t lose. Now, for the events of the abbey I have many fine hypotheses, but there is no evident fact that allows me to say which is best. So, rather than appear foolish afterward, I renounce seeming clever now. Let me think no more, until tomorrow at least.” — location: [4721](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=4721) ^ref-47447 --- “And you,” I said with childish impertinence, “never commit errors?” “Often,” he answered. “But instead of conceiving only one, I imagine many, so I become the slave of none.” — location: [4731](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=4731) ^ref-25376 --- I had the impression that William was not at all interested in the truth, which is nothing but the adjustment between the thing and the intellect. On the contrary, he amused himself by imagining how many possibilities were possible. — location: [4733](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=4733) ^ref-60627 --- “But did the ancient masters happen to receive from God the revelation of the unicorn’s true nature?” “Not the revelation: the experience. They were fortunate enough to be born in lands where unicorns live, or in times when unicorns lived in our own lands.” “But then how can we trust ancient wisdom, whose traces you are always seeking, if it is handed down by lying books that have interpreted it with such license?” “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, a precept that the commentators of the holy books had very clearly in mind. — location: [4893](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=4893) ^ref-21763 --- The unicorn of the books is like a print. If the print exists, there must have existed something whose print it is.” “But different from the print, you say.” “Of course. The print does not always have the same shape as the body that impressed it, and it doesn’t always derive from the pressure of a body. At times it reproduces the impression a body has left in our mind: it is the print of an idea. The idea is sign of things, and the image is sign of the idea, sign of a sign. But from the image I reconstruct, if not the body, the idea that others had of it.” — location: [4909](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=4909) ^ref-63834 --- I learned later that, reading books of medicine, you are always convinced you feel the pains of which they speak. — location: [4998](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=4998) ^ref-63505 --- who defined love as an assiduous thought of a melancholy nature, born as a result of one’s thinking again and again of the features, gestures, or behavior of a person of the opposite sex (with what vivid fidelity had Avicenna described my case!): it does not originate as an illness but is transformed into illness when, remaining unsatisfied, it becomes obsessive thought — location: [5020](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=5020) ^ref-31020 --- There is lust not only of the flesh. Bernard Gui is lustful; his is a distorted lust for justice that becomes identified with a lust for power. Our holy and no longer Roman Pontiff lusts for riches. And the cellarer as a youth had a lust to testify and transform and do penance, and then a lust for death. And Benno’s lust is for books. Like all lusts, including that of Onan, who spilled his seed on the ground, it is sterile and has nothing to do with love, not even carnal love. . . .” “I know,” I murmured, despite myself. William pretended not to hear. Continuing his observations, he said, “True love wants the good of the beloved.” — location: [6132](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=6132) ^ref-61138 --- “It is the moment,” Jorge was now saying, “when everything will fall into lawlessness, sons will raise their hands against fathers, wives will plot against husbands, husbands will bring wives to law, masters will be inhuman to servants and servants will disobey their masters, there will be no more respect for the old, the young will demand to rule, work will seem a useless chore to all, everywhere songs will rise praising license, vice, dissolute liberty of behavior. — location: [6254](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=6254) ^ref-31924 --- “A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.” — location: [6753](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=6753) ^ref-6029 --- The Antichrist can be born from piety itself, from excessive love of God or of the truth, as the heretic is born from the saint and the possessed from the seer. Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. — location: [7561](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B003WUYPTC&location=7561) ^ref-41557 ---