Elias Canetti Quotes & Sayings

You draw closer to truth by shutting yourself off from mankind. — Elias Canetti

Travelling, one accepts everything; indignation stays at home. One looks, one listens, one is roused to enthusiasm by the most dreadful things because they are new. Good travellers are heartless. — Elias Canetti

Her somewhat overly round head was wedged deep within her shoulders on a short body; it sat right upon it, as though there had never been such a thing as a neck, what a superfluous contraption. — Elias Canetti

A person often falls very ill in order to become someone else and then returns to health much disappointed. — Elias Canetti

Death is a scandal. The machine is functioning, we are all hostages — 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

A head full of stars, just not in constellation yet. — Elias Canetti

Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim. — Elias Canetti

The business friend did not recognize the sewerman, which was not surprising as the man's face was no more than a shining turd. — Elias Canetti

It is important what a man still plans at the end. It shows the measure of injustice in his death. — Elias Canetti

I would like to become tolerant without overlooking anything, persecute no one even when all people persecute me; become better without noticing it; become sadder, but enjoy living; become more serene, be happy in others; belong to no one, grow in everyone; love the best, comfort the worst; not even hate myself anymore. — Elias Canetti

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

Border crossings in the Balkans, where bitter wars have been waged, were not regarded as pleasurable; in many places, they weren't even possible, and one avoided them. But, while riding in the droshky and later, when we dismounted, we saw the most luxuriant orchards and vegetable gardens, dark-violet eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, gigantic pumpkins and melons; I couldn't get over my amazement at all the different things that grew here. "That's what it's like here", said Mother, "a blessed land. And it's a civilized land, no one should be ashamed of being born here. — Elias Canetti

Beauty always has something remote. — Elias Canetti

There are books, that one has for twenty years without reading them, that one always keeps at hand, that one takes along from city to city, from country to country, carefully packed, even when there is very little room, and perhaps one leafs through them while removing them from a trunk; yet one carefully refrains from reading even a complete sentence. Then after twenty years, there comes a moment when suddenly, as though under a high compulsion, one cannot help taking in such a book from beginning to end, at one sitting: it is like a revelation. Now one knows why one made such a fuss about it. It had to be with one for a long time; it had to travel; it had to occupy space; it had to be a burden; and now it has reached the goal of its voyage, now it reveals itself, now it illuminates the twenty bygone years it mutely lived with one. It could not say so much if it had not been there mutely the whole time, and what idiot would dare to assert that the same things had always been in it. — Elias Canetti

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

One has a prejudice wherever one fears a transformation. — Elias Canetti

Fear thrives strongest; there is no telling how little we would be without having suffered fear. An intrinsic characteristic of humanity is the tendency to give in to fear. No fear is lost, but its hiding places are a riddle. Perhaps, of all things, fear is the one that changes least. — Elias Canetti

One needs time to free oneself of wrong convictions. If it happens too suddenly, they go on festering. — Elias Canetti

One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it. — Elias Canetti

In eternity everything is just beginning. — Elias Canetti

His meals were always punctual. Whether she cooked well or badly he did not know; it was a matter of total indifference to him. During his meals, which he ate at his writing desk, he was busy with important considerations. As a rule he would not have been able to say what precisely he had in his mouth. He reserved consciousness for real thoughts; they depend upon it; without consciousness, thoughts are unthinkable. Chewing and digestion happen of themselves. — Elias Canetti

It is always the enemy who started it, even if he was not the first to speak out, he was certainly planning it; and if he was not actually planning it, he was thinking of it; and, if he was not thinking of it, he would have thought of it. — Elias Canetti

How could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you? — Elias Canetti

People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation. — Elias Canetti

Speak as though it were the last sentence allowed you. — Elias Canetti

Seizing and incorporating ... There is nothing about us which is more strongly primitive. [p. 203] — Elias Canetti

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

The fluid boundary between individuals and types is a true concern of the real writer. — Elias Canetti

She was crude, but loyal. He began to understand her even better than before. A pity she was so old; it was too late to try to make a human being of her. — Elias Canetti

History portrays everything as if it could not have come otherwise. History is on the side of what happened. — Elias Canetti

In five minutes the earth would be a desert, and you cling to books. — Elias Canetti

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

The first effect of adjusting to other people is that one becomes boring. — Elias Canetti

Relearn astonishment. — Elias Canetti

The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. — Elias Canetti

Yes, this was his home. Here no harm could come to him. He smiled at the mere idea that any harm could come to him here. He avoided looking at the divan on which he slept. Every human creature needed a home, not a home of the kind understood by crude knock-you-down patriots, not a religion either, a mere insipid foretaste of a heavenly home: no, a real home, in which space, work, friends, recreation, and the scope of a man's ideas came together into an orderly whole, into - so to speak - a personal cosmos. The best definition of a home was a library. — 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

Savor powerlessness, after power, in every phase that matches it precisely; replace every old triumph with the new defeat; strengthen yourself on your weakness; win yourself back when so very lost. — Elias Canetti

Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves. — Elias Canetti

I cannot become modest; too many things burn in me; the old solutions are falling apart; nothing has been done yet with the new ones. So I begin, everywhere at once, as if I had a century ahead of me. — Elias Canetti

He would like to start from scratch. Where is scratch? — 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

At this point, the jealousy that tortured me all my life commenced, and the force with which it came over me marked me forever. It became my true passion, utterly heedless of any attempts at convincing me or pointing out a better way. — Elias Canetti

Almost Kien was tempted to believe in happiness, that contemptible life-goal of illiterates. If it came of itself, without being hunted for, if you did not hold it fast by force and treated it with a certain condescension, it was permissible to endure its presence for a few days — Elias Canetti

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

A child ... opens and closes like a blossom. — Elias Canetti

I have no sounds that could serve to soothe me, no violoncello like him, no lament that anyone would recognize as a lament because it sounds subdued, in an inexpressibly tender language. I have only these lines on the yellowish paper and words that are never new, for they keep saying the same thing through an entire life. — Elias Canetti

Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true. — Elias Canetti

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

THE CROWD, suddenly there where there was nothing before, is a mysterious and universal phenomenon. A few people may have been standing together-five, ten or twelve, not more; nothing has been announced, nothing is expected. Suddenly everywhere is black with people and more come streaming from all sides as though streets had only one direction. Most of them do not know what has happened and, if questioned, have no answer; but they hurry to be there where most other people are. There is a determination in their movement which is quite different from the expression of ordinary curiosity. It seems as though the movement of some of them transmits itself to the others. But that is not all; they have a goal which is there before they can find words for it. (16) — Elias Canetti

Nothing among all human emotions is more beautiful and more hopeless than the wish to be loved for oneself alone. Who are you anyway, next to countless others, to deserve such preference ? We do not want to be interchangeable; let no one be able to pinch-it for us. A figurative unmistakability claiming to be spatial and siritual. As though the earth had only one heaven, and heaven only one earth, we lay claim to the validity of both and, if we have one, we want to be the other. In reality, however, we are filled with planets, and countless heavens open their doors to us. — Elias Canetti

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

Of all the words in all languages I know, the greatest concentration is in the English word I. — 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

It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite. The crowd he needs is the dense crowd, in which body is pressed to body; a crowd, too, whose psychical constitution is also dense, or compact, so that he no longer notices who it is that presses against him. As soon as a man has surrendered himself to the crowd, he ceases to fear its touch. Ideally, all are equal there; no distinctions count. Not even that of sex. The man pressed against him is the same as himself He feels him as he feels himself. Suddenly it is as though everything were happening in one and the same body. (15) — Elias Canetti

Learning is the art of ignoring. — Elias Canetti

Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long. — Elias Canetti

No mind ever grew fat on a diet of novels. The pleasure which they occasionally offer is far too heavily paid for: they undermine the finest characters. They teach us to think ourselves into other men's places. Thus we acquire a taste for change. The personality becomes dissolved in pleasing figments of imagination. The reader learns to understand every point of view. Willingly he yields himself to the pursuit of other people's goals and loses sight of his own. Novels are so many wedges which the novelist, an actor with his pen, inserts into the closed personality of the reader. The better he calculates the size of the wedge and the strength of the resistance, so much the more completely does he crack open the personality of the victim. Novels should be prohibited by the State. — Elias Canetti

The remaining, less developed characters, were still either listening or laughing. They were divided between curiosity and satisfaction. They felt happy, but did not know it. — Elias Canetti

For I believe that part of knowledge is its desire to show itself and its refusal to put up with a merely hidden existence. I find mute knowledge dangerous, for it grows ever more mute and ultimately secret, and must then avenge itself for being secret. — Elias Canetti

Everything one records contains a grain of hope, no matter how deeply it may come from despair. — Elias Canetti

The hand which scoops up the water is the first vessel. The fingers of both hands intertwined are the first basket. [p. 217] — Elias Canetti

Words are not too old, only people are too old if they use the same words too frequently. — Elias Canetti

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

Slumbering in every human being lies an infinity of possibilities, which one must not arouse in vain. For it is terrible when the whole man resonates with echoes and echoes, none becoming a real voice. — Elias Canetti

Since the death of his daughter, a consumptive, he had not thrashed a woman; he lived alone. — Elias Canetti

Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence. — Elias Canetti

There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight. — Elias Canetti

How unfair, he thought; I can close my mouth whenever I like, as tight as I like, and what has a mouth to say? It is there for taking in nourishment, yet it is well defended, but ears - ears are a prey to every onslaught. — Elias Canetti

One should use praise to recognize what one is not. — Elias Canetti

There emanates from superlatives a destructive force. — Elias Canetti

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

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

In the hierarchy of man's activities, eating was the lowest. Eating had become the object of a cult, but in fact it was but the preliminary to other, utterly contemptible motions. It occurred to him that he wanted to perform one of these too. — Elias Canetti

I want to keep smashing myself until I am whole. — Elias Canetti

Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding. — Elias Canetti

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

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation, and it seems most true when it eschews artistic devices of any sort. — Elias Canetti

Every class has pupils who mimic the teachers particularly well and perform for their classmates; a class without such teacher-mimics would have something lifeless about it. — Elias Canetti

There is something fluid about [packs] during the course of any individual manifestation. [p. 127] — Elias Canetti

Of all of Napoleon's murders, the greatest and the most dreadful was of my father. — 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

His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations. — Elias Canetti

Most religions do not make men better, only warier. — Elias Canetti

I try to imagine someone saying to Shakespeare, 'Relax! — Elias Canetti

There can be no Creator, simply because his grief at the fate of his creation would be inconceivable and unendurable. — Elias Canetti

Books have no life; they lack feeling maybe, and perhaps cannot feel pain, as animals and even plants feel pain. But what proof have we that inorganic objects can feel no pain? Who knows if a book may not yearn for other books, its companions of many years, in some way strange to us and therefore never yet perceived? — Elias Canetti

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

A tormenting thought: as of a certain point, history was no longer real. Without noticing it, all mankind suddenly left reality; everything happening since then was supposedly not true; but we supposedly didn't notice. Our task would now be to find that point, and as long as we didn't have it, we would be forced to abide in our present destruction. — 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

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

At home in the nursery, I usually played alone. Actually, I seldom played, I spoke to the wallpaper. The many dark circles in the pattern of the wallpaper seemed like people to me. I made up stories in which they appeared, either I told them the stories or they played with me, I never got tired of the wallpaper people and I could talk to them for hours. — Elias Canetti

Justice begins with the recognition of the necessity of sharing. The oldest law is that which regulates it, and this is still themost important law today and, as such, has remained the basic concern of all movements which have at heart the community of human activities and of human existence in general. — Elias Canetti

People's fates are simplified by their names. — Elias Canetti

The act of naming is the great and solemn consolation of mankind — Elias Canetti