Elias Canetti
All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.Collection: Dreams
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.Collection: Failure
Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence.Collection: Success
His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations.
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.
One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.
There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.
A 'modern' man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.
Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves.
Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.
Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.
People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation.
The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.
Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deaf.
Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.
When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.
He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.
Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.
As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.
There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.
It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.
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.
Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true.
The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand.
One should use praise to recognize what one is not.
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?
Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous.
People's fates are simplified by their names.
Most religions do not make men better, only warier.
The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.
Words are not too old, only people are too old if they use the same words too frequently.
The planet's survival has become so uncertain that any effort, any thought that presupposes an assured future amounts to a mad gamble.
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.Collection: Happiness
Explain nothing. Put it there. Say it. Leave.Collection: Advice
Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding.Collection: Understanding
When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard aboutCollection: Writing
The first effect of adjusting to other people is that one becomes boring.Collection: People
Learning is the art of ignoring.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Honesty
There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown.Collection: Men
It is important to say all the great thoughts again, without knowing that they have already been said.Collection: Knowing
Speak as though it were the last sentence allowed you.Collection: Lasts
In five minutes the earth would be a desert, and you cling to books.Collection: Book
In eternity everything is just beginning.Collection: Eternity
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Fall
Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster.Collection: Decision
There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sightCollection: Men
Of all the words in all languages I know, the greatest concentration is in the English word I.Collection: English Words
You draw closer to truth by shutting yourself off from mankind.Collection: Mankind