The Name of the Rose - quotes

"How peaceful life would be without love, Adso. How safe, how tranquil... and how dull."

"Bacon was right in saying that the conquest of learning is achieved through the conquest of languages."

"This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain."

"Then I smiled, considering that the language of gestures and of the face is more universal than that of words, and she was reassured."

"And this, it seems, is the teaching left us by Saint Thomas, the greatest of all doctors: the more openly it remains a figure of speech, the more it is a dissimilar similitude and not literal, the more a metaphor reveals its truth."

Or do you have another hypothesis?�

�I have, but it is still vague. It seemed to me, as I read this page, that I had read some of these words before, and some phrases that are almost the same, which I have seen elsewhere, return to my mind. It seems to me, indeed, that this page speaks of something there has been talk about during these past days. ... But I cannot recall what. I must think it over. Perhaps I�ll have to read other books.�

�Why? To know what one book says you must read others?�

�At times this can be so. Often books speak of other books. Often a harmless book is like a seed that will blossom into a dangerous book, or it is the other way around: it is the sweet fruit of a bitter stem. In reading Albert, couldn�t I learn what Thomas might have said? Or in reading Thomas, know what Averro�s said?�

�True,� I said, amazed. Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.

�But then,� I said, �what is the use of hiding books, if from the books not hidden you can arrive at the concealed ones?�

�Over the centuries it is no use at all. In a space of years or days it has some use. You see, in fact, how bewildered we are.�

�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.�

"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."

"The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb."

"Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth."