Best quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

Self-ImprovementSilenceCommunicationDon't talk unless you can improve the silence.

EmpowermentPersonal GrowthIndependenceSelf-RelianceSo plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

CreativityPersonal GrowthOvercoming ChallengesLife ExperiencesAll that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

LoveRelationshipsLongingBeing with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

UnderstandingPerceptionTruthTruth never penetrates an unwilling mind.

DreamsPerceptionConsciousnessWhile we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one

IdentityTravelExistentialismLiteratureI am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

WisdomKnowledgeIntelligenceDoubtSkepticismDoubt is one of the names of intelligence.

UncertaintyLonelinessDarknessDangerI can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

ValueGratitudeAppreciationPerspectiveWhat you really value is what you miss, not what you have.

BooksMemoryOf all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination.

The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line

Personal GrowthSelf-ImprovementLearningMistakesExperiencesIn my next life I will try to commit more errors.

TimeTime forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.

LoveCreationReligionGodTo fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.

Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.

DreamsPerceptionImaginationRealityThe mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.

IdentitySelf-DiscoveryPurposeExistenceAny life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.

CreativityMemoryForgettingCreativity is suspended between memory and forgetting.

Personal ExpressionSimplicityWriting ProcessAudienceWhen I write, I do it urged by an intimate necessity. I don't have in mind an exclusive public, or a public of multitudes, I don't think in either thing. I think about expressing what I want to say. I try to do it in the simplest way possible.

HappinessPersonal ExperienceIntrospectionSinI have committed the worst of sins one can commit... I have not been happy.

СлабкістьPersonal GrowthPerseveranceStrengthFrom my weakness, I drew strength that never left me.

TimeIdentityExistentialismSelfTime is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.

ResiliencePerseveranceUncertaintyAdaptationFlexibilityNothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.

BooksPoetryLibraryDiscoveryThe fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.

PerceptionTruthExistenceRealityIllusionWe accept reality so readily - perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.

TimePerceptionExistenceOnly in the present do things happen.

TimeMoneyEqualityTime can't be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different.

KnowledgeMortalityUncertaintySelf-AwarenessIgnoranceI am not sure of anything, I know nothing . . . can you imagine that I don't even know the date of my own death?

Personal GrowthSatisfactionSelf-ReflectionAgingAcceptanceWhen you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.

НічSolitudeMemoryI cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.

BooksManHistoryI believe books will never disappear. It is impossible for it to happen. Of all man's diverse tools, undoubtedly the most astounding are his books... If books were to disappear, history would disappear. So would man.

BooksDeathWritersAfterlifeWhen writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.

IdentityPerceptionIntrospectionSelf-ReflectionSelf-AwarenessI saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me.

PastFutureRealityThe future has no other reality than as present hope, and the past is no more than present memory.

РайImaginationLibraryI have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

LifePhilosophyPerceptionExistenceMeaningLife itself is a quotation.

HappinessLifeLoveGratitudeExperienceIt means much to have loved, to have been happy, to have laid my hand on the living Garden, even for a day.

BooksReadingJorge Luis BorgesI cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.

MusicTransformationSymbolsThe task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all of these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy.

ArtArt is endless like a river flowing, passing, yet remaining.

FutureGodThe future is inevitable and precise, but it may not occur. God lurks in the gaps.

VisionPerceptionPoetryDarknessPoets, like the blind, can see in the dark.

TeachingI have preferred to teach my students not English literature but my love for certain authors, or, even better, certain pages, or even better than that, certain lines. One falls in love with a line, then with a page, then with an author. Well, why not? It is a beautiful process.

TimeUncertaintyExistenceSpaceIf space is infinite, we may be at any point in space. If time is infinite, we may be at any point in time.

PopularitySoccer is popular because stupidity is popular.

BeautyJudgmentFeelingFor me, beauty is a physical sensation, something we feel with our whole body. It is not the result of judgement. We do not arrive at it by way of rules. We either feel beauty or we don't.

TimeSelf-ReflectionSelf-IdentityPersonal TransformationTime is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.

RelationshipsUnityInterconnectednessEverything touches everything.

LoveEmotional ConnectionThe mightiest love was granted him Love that does not expect to be loved.

UniverseEach thing implies the universe.

MusicWorldMysteryThere is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music.

KnowledgeDeathExistenceImmortalityTo be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

PossibilitiesToleranceGodBeing an agnostic means all things are possible, even God, even the Holy Trinity. This world is so strange that anything may happen, or may not happen. Being an agnostic makes me live in a larger, a more fantastic kind of world, almost uncanny. It makes me more tolerant.

Jorge Luis BorgesThe original is unfaithful to the translation.

ExperienceReadingFalling In LoveI think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love.

LegacyMortalityWhat will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose?

Personal BeliefsExistenceAfterlifeMay Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell.

I write for myself, and perhaps for half a dozen friends. And that should be enough. And that might improve the quality of my writing. But if I were writing for thousands of people, then I would write what might please them. And as I know nothing about them, and maybe I'd have a rather low opinion of them, I don't think that would do any good to my work.

CreativitySelf-ExpressionExplorationPoetryArtistic ProcessA . . . poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.

PhilosophyMetaphorExistentialismComplexityPerception Of RealityThere's no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one.

PoetsCelebrationThe tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration.

BooksWritingPrideReadingLet others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.

FutureThe future is as irrevocable as an inflexible yesterday.

PatienceJourneyIntrospectionPerspectivei walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive

RegretHobbiesSometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies — for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry — I say to myself, “What a pity I can’t buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.

BeliefPurposeAcceptanceA writer, or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an instrument; everything has been given for an end. This is even stronger in the case of the artist. Everything that happens, including humiliations, embarrassments, misfortunes, all has been given like clay, like material for one's art. One must accept it.

La duda es uno de los nombres de la inteligencia.

GodIt also occurred to him that throughout history, humankind has told two stories: the story of a lost ship sailing the Mediterranean seas in quest of a beloved isle, and the story of a god who allows himself to be crucified on Golgotha.

MusicUnderstandingLanguageCommunicationThere is an hour of the afternoon when the plain is on the verge of saying something. It never says, or perhaps it says it infinitely, or perhaps we do not understand it, or we understand it and it is untranslatable as music.

BooksReadersSymbolsA book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words—or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols—spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word.

Self-CriticismI never reread what I've written. I'm far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I've done.

Israelites, Christians and Muslims profess immortality, but the veneration they render this world proves they believe only in it, since they destine all other worlds, in infinite number, to be its reward or punishment.

BooksPerceptionKnowledgeSelf-AwarenessAuthorshipMy books standing there on the shelf do not know that I have written them.

IdentityIntrospectionSelf-ReflectionSelf-AwarenessExistentialismWhen I wake up, I wake to something worse. It’s the astonishment of being myself