Best quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

CharactersMany of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on me and treating me badly.

IllusionFatherhoodThe visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it.

A system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to any one of such aspects.

PerceptionEternityRepresentationLanguageInterpretationHe thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.

PhilosophyKnowledgeDiversityIdeasEvery man should be capable of all ideas.

LanguageIn Spanish it is very difficult to make things flow, because words are over-long. But in English, you have light words.

Self-ReflectionObservationWhen one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a man that observes and narrates it and no longer the man that performed it.

What a writer wants to do is not what he does.

AnticipationRealityThen he reflected that reality does not usually coincide with our anticipation of it; with a logic of his own he inferred that to forsee a circumstantial detail is to prevent its happening. Trusting in this weak magic, he invented, so that they would not happen, the most gruesome details.

TimeMortalityImmortalityThe truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things.

BooksLifeInspirationPersonal GrowthImaginationI have always come to life after coming to books.

IdentitySelf-DiscoveryExistentialismI, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man, myself alone. From out of a whirlwind the voice of God replied: I am not, either. I dreamed the world the way you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare: one of the forms of my dream was you, who, like me, are many and one.

CriticismInterpretationAuthorshipIn the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future." -- Essay: "Kafka and his Precursors

DeterminationActionCommitmentFutureWhoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.

DeathDesireWinningYou may win your heart's desire, but in the end you're cheated of it by death.

SupportWritingSelf-ReflectionCriticismAny time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that they will receive my every aid and support. I have even secretly longed to write, under a pen name, a merciless tirade against myself.

SuccessRecognitionAppreciationA writer should have another lifetime to see if he's appreciated.

PerspectivePovertyThere is no point in being overwhelmed by the appalling total of human sufferring; such a total does not exist. Neither poverty nor pain is accumulable.

It is clear that there is no classification of the Universe that is not arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what kind of thing the universe is.

WritingWordsThe two important facts I should say, are emotion, and then words arising from emotion. I don't think you can write in an emotionless way. If you attempt it, the result is artificial. I don't like that kind of writing. I think that if a poem is really great, you should think of it as having written itself despite the author. It should flow.

LifePoetryThe central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry.

WritingUniverseAnxietyBeyond my anxiety, beyond this writing, the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting.

AmbitionsDifficultyLongingImmortalityMy undertaking is not difficult, essentially. I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.

HappinessDestinyLiteratureI...have always known that my destiny was, above all, a literary destiny — that bad things and some good things would happen to me, but that, in the long run, all of it would be converted into words. Particularly the bad things, since happiness does not need to be transformed: happiness is its own end.

WorthHeaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.

MurderCourageIn adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.

BeliefFilms are even stranger, for what we are seeing are not disguised people but photographs of disguised people, and yet we believe them while the film is being shown.

CriticismPersonally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.

ArtCreativitySelf-DiscoveryImaginationMetaphorA man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.

PoetsI suppose every poet has his own private mythology. Maybe he's unaware of it. People tell me that I have evolved a private mythology of tigers, of blades, of labyrinths, and I"m unaware of the fact this is so. My readers are finding it all the time. But I think perhaps that is the duty of poet.

FriendshipSelf-ExpressionWritingAudienceI do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as ‘The Masses’. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time.

RealityReality favors symmetry.

RealityReality is partial to symmetry and slight anachronisms

GodSelfI would rather like to think of God as being a kind of adventurer - even as Wells thought about him - or perhaps as something within us making for some unknown purpose.

LifeLossThus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.

Open-MindednessPossibilityAfterlifeI don't think we're capable of knowledge, but I like to keep an open mind. So if you ask me whether I believe in an afterlife or not, whether I believe in God or not, I can only answer you that all things are possible. And if all things are possible, heaven and hell and the angels are also possible. They're not to be ruled out.

IdentityPhilosophySelf-PerceptionExistentialismNo one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.

HappinessMysteryI have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification.

ResiliencePersonal GrowthPerceptionWritingA writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource.

HungerUniversePerhaps the apparent favor of the universe is no more than the crocodile grin of a Doberman breathing hard and about to be hungry?

Self-DiscoverySelf-ReflectionPerception Of RealityA man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face.

ProgressWe have stopped believing in progress. What progress that is !

PossibilitiesThe possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend to be frightful.

ValueWorthThe flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.

ResilienceLife ChoicesPerspectiveAdversityBlindness has not been for me a total misfortune; it should not be seen in a pathetic way. It should be seen as a way of life: one of the styles of living.

DeathExistenceConsciousnessAfterlifeImmortalityI am almost sure to be blotted out by death, but sometimes I think it is not impossible that I may continue to live in some other manner after my physical death . Or, as Hamlet wonders, what dreams will come when we leave this body?

AmbitionThe great American writer Herman Melville says somewhere in The White Whale that a man ought to be 'a patriot to heaven,' and I believe it is a good thing, this ambition to be a cosmopolitan, this idea to be citizens not of a small parcel of the world that changes according to the currents of politics, according to the wars, to what occurs, but to feel that the whole world is our country.

IronyLet 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.

EternityDeathImmortalityOnce I am dead, there will be no lack of pious hands to throw me over the railing; my grave will be the fathomless air; my body will sink endlessly and decay and dissolve in the wind generated by the fall, which is infinite.

CreativityWritingDreamingImaginationLiteratureAll writing is dreaming

Personal GrowthReadingLiteratureBesides, rereading, not reading, is what counts.

ValuePurposeThere is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.

PerceptionMortalityDeathSymbolsIt seemed incredible to me that day without premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death .

The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse to that of Poe, who reasoned, or feigned to reason, that the writing of a poem is an act of the intelligence. It never fails to amaze me that the classics hold a romantic theory of poetry, and a romantic poet a classical theory.

Writing ProcessHad I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this; I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do - when one has found one's natural voice, one's rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful.

BooksDialogueReadingA book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

ArtWritingLiteratureIt is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.

LegacyAchievementDeathPoetryPerspectiveBest thing to happen for a poet. A fine death, no? An impressive death.

TimePossibilitiesThis web of time--the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore eachother through the centuries--embrace every posibility.

WritingSimplicityComplexityUniverseI have tried (I am not sure how successfully) to write plain tales. I dare not say they are simple; there is not a simple page, a simple word, on earth -\-\ for all pages, all words, predicate the universe, whose most notorious attribute is its complexity.

TimeFearRealityGuiltGriefEmma dropped the paper. Her first impression was of a weak feeling in her stomach and in her knees; then of blind guilt, of unreality, of coldness, of fear; then she wished that it were already the next day. Immediately afterwards she realized that that wish was futile because the death of her father was the only thing that had happened in the world, and it would go on happening endlessly.

MeaningUniverseIgnoranceWe are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe.

UnderstandingCommunicationYou who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?

TimeLifeSpaceIgnoranceJorge Luis BorgesHis life, measured in space and time, will take up a mere few lines, which my ignorance will abbreviate further.

InfluenceConversationLanguageLiteratureWe did meet forty years ago. At that time we were both influenced by Whitman and I said, jokingly in part, 'I don't think anything can be done in Spanish, do you?' Neruda agreed, but we decided it was too late for us to write our verse in English. We'd have to make the best of a second-rate literature.

WritingReadingReading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.

Translations are a partial and precious documentation of the changes the text suffers.

BooksSimplicityLiteratureLiterature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not.

AuthorshipEvery writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

TimeWorkJorge Luis BorgesThe time for your labor has been granted.

TimeJorge Luis BorgesSymbolsA labyrinth of symbols... An invisible labyrinth of time.

TimeIdentityPhilosophyHuman NatureExistenceTime is the substance of which we are made

StorytellingRealityReality is not always probable, or likely. But if you're writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader's imagination will reject it.

AnimalsOn those remote pages [of 'a certain Chinese encyclopedia'] it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f ) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.

I would define the baroque as that style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities, and that borders on self-caricature. The baroque is the final stage in all art, when art flaunts and squanders its resources.