On the Shoulders of Giants by Umberto Eco

Author:Umberto Eco
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
Publisher: Harvard University Press

Alongside this series of commonplaces, which become amusing only because they are fired off in volleys—as in the technique of the list, where the tritest of expressions become admirable for the incongruous relationship they establish with other equally banal expressions—Lord Wotton reveals a particular genius in taking clichés unworthy even of fortune cookies, and making them humorous by reversing them:

Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.

I adore simple pleasures, they are the last refuge of the complex.

What I want is information: not useful information, of course; useless information.

I assure you there is no nonsense about the Americans. How dreadful!

I can sympathize with everything except suffering.

My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives. [But this one is interchangeable: When a man does a thoroughly noble thing, it is always from the stupidest motives.]

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But … it is better to be good than to be ugly. [This is as common a commonplace as you can get, of the type popularized on television: It’s better to be beautiful, rich, and healthy than ugly, poor, and ill].

It is only shallow people that do not judge by appearances.

It is perfectly monstrous, the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.

The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

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