Elias Canetti Short Quotes

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Montaigne the I-sayer. I as space, not as position.

Elias Canetti
Some sentences release their poison only after years.

Elias Canetti
I hate judgments that only crush and don't transform.

Elias Canetti
Whenever the truth threatens, he hides behind a thought.

Elias Canetti
Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding.

Elias Canetti
Everything one has forgotten cries for help in the dream.

Elias Canetti
A mind, lean in its own language. In others, it gets fat.

Elias Canetti
All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.

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

Elias Canetti
You draw closer to truth by shutting yourself off from mankind.

Elias Canetti
Justice begins with the recognition of the necessity of sharing.

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

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

Elias Canetti
There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown.

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

Elias Canetti
All the pessimists in world history together are nothing against reality.

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

Elias Canetti
All great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.

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

Elias Canetti
I repulse death with all my strength. If I accepted it, I would be a murderer.

Elias Canetti
One who, alone, would be unconquerable. But he weakens himself with allegiances.

Elias Canetti
People who cannot find their way out of history are lost, and so are their nations.

Elias Canetti
Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence.

Elias Canetti
You have but to know an object by its proper name for it to lose its dangerous magic.

Elias Canetti
Nothing was better for you than humiliation, for there was nothing you felt more deeply.

Elias Canetti
Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.

Elias Canetti
When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about

Elias Canetti
Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.

Elias Canetti
There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.

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

Elias Canetti