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

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More Quotes By Elias Canetti
  1. Read the right books and we can be as wild and worry-free as we've ever wanted to be. No law can stop us reading.
  2. You’re my prey tonight.
  3. Nothing in her life makes sense. All she craves is for the pieces of the puzzle to fit together again. She is sure one day it will happen. She just doesn’t know when. She can’t fight injustice alone— for that, she needs her friends.
  4. I can love what is broken.
  5. She is intent on pleasing the men that frighten her.
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