Quotes About Jorge Luis Borges

In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?

I prayed aloud, less to plead for divine favor than to intimidate the tribe with articulate speech.

So witless did these ideas strike me as being, so sweeping and pompous the way they were expressed, that I associated them immediately with literature.

A mí se me hace cuento que empezó Buenos Aires: La juzgo tan eterna como el agua y como el aire.

My father and he had cemented (the verb is excessive) one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.

Vi a engrenagem do amor e a modificação da morte, vi o Aleph, de todos os pontos, vi no Aleph a terra, e na terra outra vez o Aleph, e no Aleph a terra, vi meu rosto e minhas vísceras, vi teu rosto e senti vertigem e chorei, porque meus olhos haviam visto esse objeto secreto e conjetural cujo nome usurpam os homens, mas que nenhum homem olhou: o inconcebível universo. Senti infinita veneração, infinita lástima.

La realidad poética puede caber en una copla lo mismo que en un verso virgiliano.

Un atributo de lo infernal es la irrealidad, un atributo que parece mitigar sus terrores y que los agrava tal vez.

Haiku'yu biliyorum, iki üç hecede Bir an?, bir yank?y?, bir esriyiÅŸi yakalayan.

despertaba ese incompatible rencor que sólo causan la inteligencia, la gracia y la pedantería francesas [...]

Quain se arrepintió del orden ternario y predijo que los hombres que lo imitaran optarían por el binario y los demiurgos y los dioses por el infinito: infinitas historias, infinitamente ramificadas.

Let no one reduce us to the status of ascetics. There is no pleasure more complex than that of thought and we surrendered ourselves to it.

My biggest superhero of writing is Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine fabulist. He's an amazingly perceptive writer, but also willing to make a joke.

Patriotism, that least discerning of pas

Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night.

It is venturesome to think that a coordination of words (philosophies are nothing more than that) can resemble the universe very much. — Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths

My friend you must understand that time forks perpetually into countless futures. And in at least one of them I have become your enemy. Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths (1941)

The central problem of novel-writing is causality.

Time broadens the scope of verses and I know of some which, like music, are everything for all men.

discovered a classification Jorge Luis Borges devised, claiming that A certain Chinese encyclopedia divides animals into: a. Belonging to the Emperor b. Embalmed c. Tame d. Sucking pigs e. Sirens f. Fabulous g. Stray dogs h. Included in the present classification i. Frenzied j. Innumerable k. Drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush l. Et cetera m. Having just broken the water pitcher n. That from a long way off look like flies.

Mir Bahadur Ali is, as we have seen, incapable of evading the most vulgar of art's temptations: that of being a genius.

Falkland Islands in a conflict most expertly described by Jorge Luis Borges as 'two bald men fighting over a comb';