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Quotes from Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock — Elias Canetti

1905–1994 Bulgaria

← All quotes by Elias Canetti

35 quotes

His great holy books, which he does not know. They are so holy that he does not dare to open them.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

It amazes me how a person to whom literature means anything can take it up as an object of study.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

Ambition is the death of thought.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

He will not do death the honor of taking it into account.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

If one has lived long enough, there is danger of succumbing to the word “God” merely because it was always there.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

Relearn astonishment, stop grasping for knowledge, lose the habit of the past.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

Say the most personal thing, say it, nothing else matters, don’t be ashamed, the generalities can be found in the newspaper.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

I love writers who limit themselves, who write beneath their intelligence.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

He sometimes tells himself that there is nothing more to be said, simply because he won’t get around to saying it.—How contemptible!

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

“Life experience” does not amount to very much and could be learned from novels alone, e.g., from Balzac, without any help from life.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

The unconscious, which those who always speak of it least possess.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

Everything you rejected and pushed aside—take it up again.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

When he has nothing to say, he lets words speak.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

You need the rhetoric of others, the aversion it inspires, in order to find the way out of your own.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

You keep taking note of whatever confirms your ideas—better to write down what refutes and weakens them!

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

One who obeys himself suffocates as surely as one who obeys others.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

I hate judgments that only crush and don’t transform.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

There is something impure in the laments about the dangers of our time, as if they could serve to excuse our personal failure.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

One needs time to free oneself of wrong convictions. If it happens too suddenly, they go on festering.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

The once-seen does not exist yet. The always seen no longer exists.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Elias Canetti (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.