Elias Canetti Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.”

“Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deaf.”

“The planet's survival has become so uncertain that any effort, any thought that presupposes an assured future amounts to a mad gamble.”

“It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.”

“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.”

“As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.”

“One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.”

“Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.”

“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.”

“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.”