Elias Canetti
You have but to know an object by its proper name for it to lose its dangerous magic.Collection: Names
Slumbering in every human being lies an infinity of possibilities, which one must not arouse in vain. For it is terrible when the whole man resonates with echoes and echoes, none becoming a real voice.Collection: Real
One has a prejudice wherever one fears a transformation.Collection: Fear
Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is trueCollection: Lying
Beauty always has something remote.Collection: Beauty
History portrays everything as if it could not have come otherwise. History is on the side of what happened.Collection: History
Justice begins with the recognition of the necessity of sharing. The oldest law is that which regulates it, and this is still themost important law today and, as such, has remained the basic concern of all movements which have at heart the community of human activities and of human existence in general.Collection: Heart
...how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?Collection: Home
There can be no Creator, simply because his grief at the fate of his creation would be inconceivable and unendurable.Collection: Atheist
A person often falls very ill in order to become someone else and then returns to health much disappointed.Collection: Fall
It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite… The reversal of fear of being touched belongs to the nature of crowds. The feeling of relief is most striking where the density of the crowd is greatestCollection: Men
The act of naming is the great and solemn consolation of mankindCollection: Mankind
Travelling, one accepts everything; indignation stays at home. One looks, one listens, one is roused to enthusiasm by the most dreadful things because they are new. Good travellers are heartless.Collection: Home
There emanates from superlatives a destructive force.Collection: Force
He would like to start from scratch. Where is scratch?Collection: Scratches
A child. . . opens and closes like a blossom.Collection: Children
It is important what a man still plans at the end. It shows the measure of injustice in his death.Collection: Death
Everything one records contains a grain of hope, no matter how deeply it may come from despair.Collection: Philosophical
Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deafCollection: Deaf
A head full of stars, just not in constellation yet.Collection: Stars
I want to keep smashing myself until I am whole.Collection: Want
I try to imagine someone saying to Shakespeare, 'Relax!Collection: Trying
Almost Kien was tempted to believe in happiness, that contemptible life-goal of illiterates. If it came of itself, without being hunted for, if you did not hold it fast by force and treated it with a certain condescension, it was permissible to endure its presence for a few daysCollection: Believe
Death is a scandal. The machine is functioning, we are all hostagesCollection: Machines