Quotes from Jorge Luís Borges

Essere immortale è cosa da poco: tranne l'uomo, tutte le creature lo sono, giacché ignorano la morte; la cosa divina, terribile, incomprensibile, è sapersi immortali.

The morning sun shone over the bronze blade. There were no more traces of blood left. Would you believe it Ariadne? said Theseus The Minotaur almost didn't defend itself.

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

Noches hubo en que me creí tan seguro de poder olvidarla que voluntariamente la recordaba. Lo cierto es que abusé de esos ratos; darles principio resultaba más fácil que darles fin.

Lost in these imaginary illusions I forgot my destiny – that of the hunted.

To refute him is to become contaminated with unreality.

There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once.

Years of solitude had taught him that, in one's memory, all days tend to be the same, but that there is not a day, not even in jail or in the hospital, which does not bring surprises, which is not a translucent network of minimal surprises.

La gloria es una forma de incomprensión; quizás la peor.

que mientras dromimos aqui, estamos despiertos en otro lado y que asi cada hombre es de dos hombres.

I no longer believe in literary schools now; I believe in the individual.

Estar contigo o no estar contigo, es la medida de mi tiempo.

We have a very precise image - an image at times shameless - of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.

I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia.

There are those who cannot imagine a world without birds; there are those who cannot imagine a world without water; but in my case I am unable to imagine a world without books.

Bazen ölsem diyorum. sahilde güneÅŸlenmeye uzan?r gibi, uzan?p s?cak kumlara, kum olsam. Unutsa sevdiklerim, hiç yaÅŸamam???m gibi. Ben de unutsam, kaybolsam.

Today is tomorrow and yesterday.

medité en ese laberinto perdido: lo imaginé inviolado y perfecto en la cumbre secreta de una montaña, lo imaginé borrado por arrozales o debajo del agua, lo imaginé infinito, no ya de quioscos ochavados y de sendas que vuelven, sino de ríos y provincias y reinos... Pensé en un laberinto de laberintos, en un sinuoso laberinto creciente que abarca el pasado y el porvenir y que implicara de algún modo a los astros.

He intentado, no se con que fortuna, la redacción de cuentos directos. No me atrevo a afirmar que son sencillos; no hay en la tierra, una sola página, una sola palabra, que lo sea, ya que todas postulan el universo, cuyo más notorio atributo es la complejidad.

soy dios, soy héroe, soy filósofo, soy demonio y soy mundo, lo cual es una fatigosa manera de decir que no soy.

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

Crees que la Caída es otra cosa que ignorar que estamos en el Paraíso?

Upstream, Arkansas and Ohio have their bottomlands, too, populated by a jaundiced and hungry-looking race, prone to fevers, whose eyes gleam at the sight of stone and iron, for they know only sand and driftwood and muddy water.

What one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men. For that reason a disobedience committed in a garden contaminates the human race; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew suffices to safe it. Perhaps Schopenhauer is right: I am all others, any men is all men, Shakespeare is in some way the wretched John Vincent Moon.