Umberto Eco Quotes

A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.

When he was a young man he prayed constantly for chastity; but years later he realized that while his lips had been saying 'Oh Lord, make me chaste,' his heart had been secretly adding, 'But please don't do it just yet.

Filth and old age, I'm sure you will agree, are powerful wardens upon chastity.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

And so it is, that both the Devil and the angelic Spirit present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice.

if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.

I have always espoused chastity except when one can no longer resist the temptation.

Though Satan instils his poison, and fans the flames of our corrupt desires within us,we are yet not carried by any external force to the commission of sin, but our own flesh entices us, and we willingly yield to its allurements.

Women were the reason I became a monk - and, ah, the reason I switched back.

Because monks come from the midst of purity, they consider as good and pure what does not arouse desire among other people.

Lust sullies every age of man, but quite extinguishes old age.

[Saint Anthony] said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company.

To tempt, and to be tempted, are things very nearly allied, and, in spite of the finest maxims of morality impressed upon the mind, whenever feeling has anything to do in the matter, no sooner is it excited than we have already gone vastly farther than we are aware of, and I have yet to learn how it is possible to prevent its being excited.

I endeavored to renounce society, that I might avoid temptation. But it was a poor religion; so far as it prevailed, only tended to make me gloomy, stupid, unsociable, and useless.

I wish I knew where I was going. Doomed to be carried of the spirit into the wilderness, I suppose. I wish I could be more moderate in my desires, but I cannot, and so there is no rest.

The men and women, who desire to obtain seats in the celestial kingdom, will find that they must battle everyday.

Hey, I always say: if you want a quiet life, become a monk.

In a quiet Franciscan monastery kind and silent monks looked after me. After many weeks I was discharged. Unfit for further service.

Let heaven-eyed Prudence battle with Desire.

We've got to remember the Book says the devil "walketh about the earth to and fro seeking who he may devour", and he nearly got me and he had me for a while. It didn't mean that I was no longer a Christian or that God had disowned me.

Freedom was my first great desire. The second, which remains hidden within me to this day, tormenting me, was the desire for sanctity. Hero together with saint: such is mankind's supreme model.

Reasons always came with a purpose, to give the appearance of a struggle between principle and desire. Principle had power only until you found what you had to have.

Satan stations more devils on monastery walls than in the dens of iniquity, for the latter offer no resistance.