Quotes from Jorge Luís Borges

un acto es menos que todas las horas de un hombre.

Y no comprendo cómo el tiempo pasa Yo, que soy tiempo y sangre y agonía.

I would say, however, that romantic sentiment is a keen and pathetic sense of time, a few hours of amorous delight, the idea that everything passes away; a deeper sentiment for autumn, for twilight, for the passing nature of our own lives.

No one can read two thousand books. In the four hundred years I have lived, I've not read more than half a dozen

Hemos soñado el mundo. Lo hemos soñado resistente, misterioso, visible, ubicuo en el espacio y firme en el tiempo; pero hemos consentido en su arquitectura tenues y eternos insterticios de sinrazón para saber que es falso.

But I will relate what happened with absolute honesty; that, perhaps, will help me understand it. After all, when one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a person that observes and narrates it and no longer the person that performed it.

Seré todos o nadie. Seré el otro Que sin saberlo soy, el que ha mirado Ese otro sueño, mi vigilia. La juzga, Resignado y sonriente.

Don't go on multiplying the mysteries,' Unwin said. 'They should be kept simple. Bear in mind Poe's purloined letter, bear in mind Zangwill's locked room.' 'Or made complex,' replied Dunraven. 'Bear in mind the universe.

we are like the wizard who weaves a labyrinth and is forced to wander through it till the end of his days

I must get at you, somehow; I put away those illustrious toys you have left me, I want your hidden look, your real smile -- that lonely, mocking smile your cool mirror knows

a ti también, en otras playas de oro, te aguarda incorruptible tu tesoro: la vasta y vaga y necesaria muerte.

There is no greater comfort than the idea that we have chosen our own misfortunes.

I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.

Agustín había escrito que Jesús es la vía recta que nos salva del laberinto circular en que andan los impíos;

Differing from Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not think of time as absolute and uniform. He believed it an infinite series of times, in a dizzily growing, ever spreading network of diverging, converging and parallel times.

Si para todo hay término y hay tasa y última vez y nunca más y olvido ¿quién nos dirá de quién en esta casa, sin saberlo, nos hemos despedido?

Je ne crois pas aux méthodes du réalisme, genre artificiel s'il en est; je préfère révéler d'un seul coup ce que j'ai compris graduellement. »

Per il candore e la semplicità della sua vita, c'è chi lo giudica un angelo; è una pietosa esagerazione, poiché non c'è uomo che sia esente da colpa.

La amistad une; también el odio sabe juntar.

Buckley descree de Dios, pero quiere demostrar al Dios no existente que los hombres mortales son capaces de concebir un mundo.

Nationalism only allows for affirmations, and every doctrine that discards doubt, negation, is a form of fanaticism and stupidity.

Babilonia no es otra cosa que un infinito juego de azares.

tal vez todos sabemos profundamente que somos inmortales y que tarde o temprano, todo hombre hará todas las cosas y sabrá todo.

I kept getting close to happiness and have stood in the shadow of suffering.