Dawson Escott

“Thus God knows the world, because He conceived it in His mind, as if from the outside, before it was created, and we do not know its rule, because we live inside it, having found it already made.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“But then how can we trust ancient wisdom, whose traces you are always seeking, if it is handed down by lying books that have interpreted it with such license?

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means, a precept that the commentators of the holy books had very clearly in mind.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get almost all our wonders at second hand.”
― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World