Jorge Luis Borges Quotes - Page 10

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• I...have always known that my destiny was, above all, a literary destiny — that bad things and some good things would happen to me, but that, in the long run, all of it would be converted into words. Particularly the bad things, since happiness does not need to be transformed: happiness is its own end.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Running, Destiny, Long

  9 Copy quote

• We did meet forty years ago. At that time we were both influenced by Whitman and I said, jokingly in part, 'I don't think anything can be done in Spanish, do you?' Neruda agreed, but we decided it was too late for us to write our verse in English. We'd have to make the best of a second-rate literature.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Writing, Thinking, Years

  5 Copy quote

• This web of time--the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore eachother through the centuries--embrace every posibility.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Embrace, Century, Approach

  Jorge Luis Borges (1993). “Ficciones”, Everyman's Library

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• I suppose every poet has his own private mythology. Maybe he's unaware of it. People tell me that I have evolved a private mythology of tigers, of blades, of labyrinths, and I"m unaware of the fact this is so. My readers are finding it all the time. But I think perhaps that is the duty of poet.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Thinking, People, Labyrinth

  Source: thefloatinglibrary.com

  10 Copy quote

• The European and the North American consider that a book that has been awarded any kind of prize must be good; the Argentine allows for the possibility that the book might not be bad, despite the prize.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Book, Might, Kind

  Jorge Luis Borges (1999). “Selected Non-Fictions”, Penguin Group USA

  5 Copy quote

• Whoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Past, Should, Accomplished

  Jorge Luis Borges (1962). “Ficciones”, p.92, Grove Press

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• When one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a man that observes and narrates it and no longer the man that performed it.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Men, Actors, He Man

  Jorge Luis Borges (2005). “Brodie's Report: Including the Prose Fiction from In Praise of Darkness”, Penguin Classics

  5 Copy quote

• Perhaps the apparent favor of the universe is no more than the crocodile grin of a Doberman breathing hard and about to be hungry?

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Breathing, Dobermans, Favors

  22 Copy quote

• Films are even stranger, for what we are seeing are not disguised people but photographs of disguised people, and yet we believe them while the film is being shown.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Believe, People, Film

  Jorge Luis Borges, Eliot Weinberger (2009). “Seven Nights”, p.13, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Flight, Life Is, Oblivion

  Jorge Luis Borges (1999). “Everything and Nothing”, p.75, New Directions Publishing

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• The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Men, Simplicity, World

  Jorge Luis Borges (1964). “Dreamtigers”, p.50, University of Texas Press

  4 Copy quote

• Once I am dead, there will be no lack of pious hands to throw me over the railing; my grave will be the fathomless air; my body will sink endlessly and decay and dissolve in the wind generated by the fall, which is infinite.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Fall, Air, Hands

  Jorge Luis Borges, Donald A. Yates, James East Irby (1964). “Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings”, p.52, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• A writer's work is the product of laziness.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Writing, Laziness, Products

  25 Copy quote

• The aesthetic event is something as evident, as immediate, as indefinable as love, the taste of fruit, of water. We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it with other words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings?

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Water, Feelings, Doubt

  "Siete noches/Seven Nights". Book by Jorge Luis Borges, 1980.

  4 Copy quote

• Islam asserts that on the unappealable Day of Judgment every perpetrator of the image of a living creature will be raised from the dead with his works, and he will be commanded to bring them to life, and he will fail, and be cast out with them into the fires of punishment.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Fire, Punishment, Islam

  Jorge Luis Borges (1964). “Dreamtigers”, p.27, University of Texas Press

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• I came to the idea of how fine it would be to think of an encyclopedia of an actual world, and then of an encyclopedia, a very rigorous one of course, of an imaginary world, where everything should be linked.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Thinking, Ideas, Would Be

  Source: denisdutton.com

  4 Copy quote

• The universe is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Numbers, Infinite, Gallery

  "The Library of Babel" (1941) (translation by James E. Irby)

  7 Copy quote

• It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Different, May, Metaphor

  Jorge Luis Borges (1964). “Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings”, p.192, New Directions Publishing

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• If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his reader to believe it.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Believe, Writing, Worship

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• The central problem of novel-writing is causality.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Writing, Causality, Problem

  "Discussion". Book by Jorge Luis Borges, 1932.

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• In the course of a life devoted less to living than to reading, I have verified many times that literary intentions and theories are nothing more than stimuli and that the final work usually ignores or even contradicts them.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Reading, Finals, Literature

  "Other Inquisitions". Book by Jorge Luis Borges, 1952.

  4 Copy quote

• I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future . . . I felt myself to be, for an unknown period of time, an abstract perceiver of the world.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Past, Labyrinth, World

  Jorge Luis Borges, Donald A. Yates, James East Irby (1964). “Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings”, p.23, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• Im merely a dreamer, and then a writer, and my happiest moments are when I'm a reader.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Dreamer, Moments

  Source: thefloatinglibrary.com

  4 Copy quote

• It seemed incredible that this day, a day without warnings or omens, might be that of my implacable death.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Warning, Might, Incredibles

  Jorge Luis Borges (1962). “Ficciones”, p.90, Grove Press

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• My father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Running, Father, Book

  Jorge Luis Borges (2013). “Jorge Luis Borges: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations”, p.101, Melville House

  4 Copy quote

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