Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti Quotes
60 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
I was never drawn to experiment with language; I take note of such experiments, but avoid them in my own writing. The reason is that the substance of life claims me completely. To indulge in linguistic experiments is to ignore the greater part of this substance, leaving all but a tiny portion untouched and unused, as if a musician were to ceaselessly play an instrument with his little finger only.
Elias Canetti
Source
Report...
The story of your youth must not turn into a catalog of what became important in your later life. It must also contain the dissipation, the failure, and the waste.
Elias Canetti
Source
Report...
The unity of a nation consists mainly in its being able to act, when necessary, like a single paranoiac.
Elias Canetti
Source
Report...
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.
Elias Canetti
Source
Report...
Life experience does not amount to very much and could be learned from novels alone, e. g., from Balzac, without any help from life.
Elias Canetti
Source
Report...
Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.
Elias Canetti
Source
Report...
One who, alone, would be unconquerable. But he weakens himself with allegiances.
Elias Canetti
Source
Report...
It amazes me how a person to whom literature means anything can take it up as an object of study.
Elias Canetti
Source
Report...
Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.
Elias Canetti
Source
Report...
He is a lesser figure than X —how it pleases an Englishman to say that! Never suspecting what basement that would put him in, a wood louse.
Elias Canetti
1
2
3
Quote of the day
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Elias Canetti
Creative Commons
Born:
July 25, 1905
Died:
August 14, 1994
(aged 89)
Bio:
Elias Canetti was a German language author, born in Bulgaria, and later a British citizen. He was a modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer.
Known for:
Crowds and Power (1983)
Auto-da-Fé (1935)
The Tongue Set Free (1979)
Party in the Blitz
Most used words:
life
fear
truth
time
man
people
years
write
sentences
help
keep
Elias Canetti on Wikipedia
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Elias Canetti Quotes
Elias Canetti Short Quotes
British Playwright Quotes
Playwright Quotes
20th-century Playwright Quotes
Related People
Franz Kafka
Czech Author
Imre Kertész
Hungarian Translator
Karl Kraus
Austrian Poet
Ingeborg Bachmann
Austrian Author
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes