Quotes by

Elias Canetti

A modern man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice. – Elias Canetti

Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous. – Elias Canetti

It is important to say all the great thoughts again, without knowing that they have already been said. – Elias Canetti

The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand. – Elias Canetti

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange. – Elias Canetti

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

As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesnt know the bad he might do. – Elias Canetti

Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster. Otherwise, why do so many people walk upright and with open eyes into their misfortune? – Elias Canetti

Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one days insolence. – Elias Canetti

Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deaf. – Elias Canetti

Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food. – Elias Canetti

The fear of burglars is not only the fear of being robbed, but also the fear of a sudden and unexpected clutch out of the darkness. – Elias Canetti

The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure. – Elias Canetti

He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it. – Elias Canetti

There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth. – Elias Canetti

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation. – Elias Canetti

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

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

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