# Quote — José Saramago, The Cave

> Encyclopedias are like immutable cycloramas, prodigious projectors whose reels have got stuck and which show, with a kind of maniacal fixity, a landscape which, because it is condemned to be only and for all eternity what it was, will at the same time grow older more decrepit and more unnecessary.The encyclopedia purchased by Cipriano Algor's father is magnificent and as useless as a line of poetry we cannot quite remember.

- Author: [José Saramago](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jose-saramago.md)
- Book: [The Cave](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jose-saramago/the-cave.md)
- Page: 57
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Saramago#The_Cave_(2000)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/jose-saramago/the-cave/encyclopedias-are-like

## More from this book

> The young have the ability, but lack the wisdom, and the old have the wisdom, but lack the ability.

p. 4 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jose-saramago/the-cave/the-young-have.md)

> Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it.

p. 28 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jose-saramago/the-cave/life-is-like.md)

> Where do begin, he asked, Where you always have to begin, at the beginning,

p. 53 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jose-saramago/the-cave/where-do-begin.md)