Quotes from Jorge Luís Borges

I...confirm the fact - with a certain bittersweet melancholy - that everything in the world brings me back to a quotation or a book.

I owe my first inkling of the problem of infinity to a large biscuit tin that was a source of vertiginous mystery during my childhood.

El tiempo no rehace lo que perdemos, la eternidad lo guarda para la gloria y también para el fuego.

To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death.

Considerai anche che nei linguaggi umani non c'è proposizione che non implichi l'universo intero; dire la tigre è dire le tigri che la generarono, i cervi e le testuggini che divorò, il pascolo di cui si alimentarono i cervi, la terra che fu madre del pascolo, il cielo che dette luce alla terra.

La amistad no es menos misteriosa que el amor o que cualquiera de las otras faces de esta confusión que es la vida. He sospechado alguna vez que la única cosa sin misterio es la felicidad, porque se justifica por sí sola.

Además, confesar un hecho es dejar de ser el actor para ser el testigo, para ser alguien que lo mira y lo narra y que ya no lo ejecutó.

Application, resignation, and chance had gone into the writing; I saw, however, that Daneri's real work lay not in the poetry but in his invention of reasons why the poetry should be admired. Of course, this second phase of his effort modified the writing in his eyes, though not in the eyes of others.

Lo sucesivo del lenguaje indebidamente exagera los hechos que indicamos, ya que cada palabra abarca un lugar en la página y un instante en la mente del lector...

God moves the player, and he, the piece. Which god behind God begets the plot Of dust and time and dream and agonies.

Science is a finite sphere that grows in infinite space; each new expansion makes it include a larger zone of the unknown, but the unknown is inexhaustable.

I came to abominate my body, I came to sense that two eyes, two hands, two lungs are as monstrous as two faces.

I had no wish to take any determined route on that stroll; I attempted, rather, a maximum latitude of probabilities in order not to wear out expectation with an obligatory anticipation of a single one of them. I was able, within the imperfect limits of possibility, to walk, as they say, at random. I accepted, without any conscious prejudice but that of avoiding the wider avenues and streets, the most obscure invitations of chance.

Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the Quixote and Hamlet a spectator of Hamlet?... these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictitious.

Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic.

Andere mögen sich der Bücher rühmen, die sie geschrieben haben, mein Ruhm sind die Bücher, die ich gelesen habe.

Entre las cosas hay una De la que no se arrepiente Nadie en la tierra. Esa cosa Es haber sido valiente. Siempre el coraje es mejor, La esperanza nunca es vana

What will my redeemer be like? I wonder. Will he be a bull or a man? Will he perhaps be a bull with the face of a man? Or will he be like me?

In this world, beauty is so common.

As we all know, there is a kind of lazy pleasure in useless and out-of-the-way erudition.

Gerçekte, uykudan uyan?p da kendi kendisiyle kar??laÅŸmayan insan yoktur.

Little has happened to me in my lifetime, but I have read much.

Ölümü sab?rs?zl?kla bekleyerek ama hiç s?zlanmadan öldü.

De los diversos instrumentos inventados por el hombre, el más asombroso es el libro; todos los demás son extensiones de su cuerpo… Sólo el libro es una extensión de la imaginación y la memoria".