Umberto Eco Quotes

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

The most irritating thing about cliches, I decided, was how frequently they were true.

You should have felt the buzz the moment all five of us got together in the same room for the first time again. We all started laughin'—it was like the five years had never passed. We knew we'd made the right move.

It’s the feeling of total control. When you are properly trained, your body works hard — but when you move, you do not suffer. That’s the feeling I am looking for.

Robin [Williams] was a world treasure. As we mourn his tragic death, we must remember him for the great waves of laughter that he was able to illicit from us, how his humor and insights - though they came from a place of pain and uncertainty - connected us and reminded us of how flawed and fragile...how human we are. How we are capable of moments of inspired transcendence and others of unspeakable despair.

Life deserves laughter, hence people laugh at it.

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.

Surely if living creatures saw the results of all their evil deeds, they would turn away from them in disgust. But selfhood blinds them, and they cling to their obnoxious desires. They crave pleasure for themselves and they cause pain to others; when death destroys their individuality, they find no peace; their thirst for existence abides and their selfhood reappears in new births. Thus they continue to move in the coil and can find no escape from the hell of their own making.

Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to - alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person - you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain.

I can move objects with my mind, if I use my hands.

Yes, when you see for the first time, a great laughter arises in you - the laughter about the whole ridiculousness of your misery, the laughter about the whole foolishness of your problems, the laughter about the whole absurdity of your suffering.

Did you love well what you very soon left? Come home and take me in your arms and take away this stomach ache, headache, heartache.

Having been through a tremendous amount of emotional pain, to process it properly, to be able to have it make sense and then move it through your body, your mind, your spirit, and be done with it, you really have to address it head-on. Being able to really have the courage enough to truly face it, to truly look at it, to truly feel it.

Faith in the face of disappointment is only enhanced by laughter in the face of pain.

once you laugh at you own weaknesses, you can move forward. Comedy breaks down walls. It opens up people. If you're good, you can fill up those openings with something positive. Mabye........ combat some the ugliness in the world.

Sometimes life seems so painful it hurts even to move my arms.

Humor is the contemplation of the finite from the point of view of the infinite.

An epigram is a flashlight of a truth; a witticism, truth laughing at itself.

Lord, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughters low.

It'll be hard, but life moves fast-we'll see each other again. I know that. I can feel that. Just like I can feel how much you care for me and how much I love you

I'll do anything to keep everyone laughing. Things get too intense on film sets. I remember on The Elephant Man, I used to imitate a cat without moving my lips. David Lynch would say, "Cut! Sorry, we've got a noise somewhere on set." Everyone would be looking around for this cat.

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest!

Comedy has to have momentum in order for it to keep moving along.

Suffering increases your inner strength. Also, the wishing for suffering makes the suffering disappear.

poverty is like a pain, dormant and unbearable as long as you don't move about too much. You grow used to it, you end up by paying no attention to it. But once you presume to bring it out in the daylight, it becomes terrifying, you see it at last in all its squalor and you shrink from exposing it to the sun.