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
About This Quote

We live our lives so many times over, there are many things we do without realizing they are taking up space in our lives. Then, when we stop and think about the things we’ve done, all those moments that seemed like they lasted for no time at all, now they seem like they were packed into a short period of time.

Source: The Human Province

Some Similar Quotes
  1. A half-read book is a half-finished love affair. - David Mitchell
  2. The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  3. It starts so young, and I'm angry about that. The garbage we're taught. About love, about what's "romantic." Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and... - Deb Caletti
  4. I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."" Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes,... - Jane Austen
  5. Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you. - E. Lockhart
More Quotes By Elias Canetti
  1. All things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.
  2. Death is a scandal. The machine is functioning, we are all hostages
  3. 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.
  4. 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...
  5. 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...
Related Topics