Best quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

Self-IdentityRealityComplexityMany people have thought of me as a thinker, as a philosopher, or even as a mystic. Well the truth is that though I have found reality perplexing enough - in fact, I find it gets more perplexing all the time - I never think of myself as a thinker.

FearMortalityUncertaintyExistentialismUnpredictabilityIt seemed incredible that this day, a day without warnings or omens, might be that of my implacable death.

LifeDeathExistentialismLife and death have been lacking in my life.

BooksWritingMeaningLibrariesSymbolsI know of a wild region whose librarians repudiate the vain superstitious custom of seeking any sense in books and compare it to looking for meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of one's hands . . . They admit that the inventors of writing imitated the twenty-five natural symbols, but they maintain that this application is accidental and that books in themselves mean nothing. This opinion - we shall see - is not altogether false.

ExplorationIdealismPeople think that I've committed myself to idealism, to solipsism, or to doctrines of the cabala, because I've used them in my tales. But really I was only trying to see what could be done with them. On the other hand, it might be argued that if I use them it's because I was feeling an affinity to them. Of course, that's true.

ArtFaithWriterGod must not engage in theology. The writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us.

TimeEternityExistencePerspectiveContemplationI will pause to consider this eternity from which the subsequent ones derive.

ChangeComparisonPovertyThe poverty of yesterday was less squalid than the poverty we purchase with our industry today. Fortunes were smaller then as well.

MemoriesThat one individual should awaken in another memories that belong to still a third is an obvious paradox.

BooksReadingLiteratureDifferencesLiterature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.

ПеремогаAmbiguityIntrospectionUncertaintyThat is what always happens: we never know whether we are victors or whether we are defeated.

ActionPhilosophyInterpretationAll theories are legitimate, no matter. What matters is what you do with them.

PerceptionReflectionIllusionComplexityIt only takes two facing mirrors to build a labyrinth.

PoliticsEthicsPublic ImageI think of myself as being an ethical man, but I don't try to teach ethics. I have no message. I know little about contemporary life. I don't read a newspaper. I dislike politics and politicians. I belong to no party whatever. My private life is a private life. I try to avoid photography and publicity.

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

PastChangeMemoryReadingI am interested in the past. Perhaps one of the reasons is we cannot make, cannot change the past. I mean you can hardly unmake the present. But the past after all is merely to say a memory, a dream. You know my own past seems continually changed when I am remembering it, or reading things that are interesting to me.

KnowledgeUncertaintyI have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.

LoveRelationshipsForgettingThere are those who seek the love of a woman to forget her, to not think about her.

TruthMathematicsThe man who has learned that three plus one are four doesn't have to go through a proof of that assertion with coins, or dice, or chess pieces, or pencils. He knows it, and that's that. He cannot conceive a different sum. There are mathematicians who say that three plus one is a tautology for four, a different way of saying "four" ... If three plus one can be two, or fourteen, then reason is madness.

UnityThis felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.

DreamsHorrorInterpretationIn our dreams (writes Coleridge) images represent the sensations we think they cause; we do not feel horror because we are threatened by a sphinx; we dream of a sphinx in order to explain the horror we feel.

BeliefWritingWriterIf a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his reader to believe it.

BooksChildhoodLibraryReadingMy father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read.

Self-ReflectionWhy do you seem so annoyed at what I'm saying?" "Because we're too much like each other. I loathe your face, which is a caricature of mine, I loathe your voice, which is a mockery of mine, I loathe your pathetic syntax, which is my own.

ForgivenessSelf-WorthArrogancePrideSinYour unforgivable sins do not allow you to see my splendor.

TimeTime, which despoils castles, enriches verses.

TimePoetryFrustrationWriter's BlockIn vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman’s eyes. You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, you have not written the poem.

BooksPerceptionChildhoodImaginationAs a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight.

BooksTimeLibraryLeaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved.

LibrariesYo, que me figuraba el Paraíso / Bajo la especie de una biblioteca. I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.

We have shared out, like thieves, the amazing treasures of days and nights.

HappinessWritingDreamingReadingIm merely a dreamer, and then a writer, and my happiest moments are when I'm a reader.

ArtWritingOpinionsMysteryThe art of writing is mysterious, the opinions we hold are ephemeral.

I live in a grey world, rather like the silver screen world. But yellow stands out.

RecognitionFamePerspectiveFame is a form, perhaps the worst form, of incomprehension.

VanitySatisfactionTo bless thine enemy is a good way to satisfy thy vanity.

Human NatureConsequencesImaginationViolenceSocietyI foresee that man will resign himself each day to more atrocious undertakings; soon there will be no one but warriors and brigands; I give them this counsel: The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.

DiscoveryI owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia.

IntelligenceThinkingTo think, analyze and invent, he [Pierre Menard] also wrote me, “are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence. To glorify the occasional fulfillment of this function, to treasure ancient thoughts of others, to remember with incredulous amazement that the doctor universal is thought, is to confess our languor or barbarism. Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe that in the future he will be." (Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote, 1939)

PerceptionExistencePerspectiveCanada is so far away it hardly exists.

Self-AcceptanceLife LessonsPersonal IdentityAgingMy advanced age has taught me the resignation of being Borges.

CreativityInspirationIntelligencePoetryPoetry springs from something deeper; it's beyond intelligence.

CreativityExpressionStorytellingLiteratureThe things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said. Looking for metaphors, for example: When I was a young man I was always hunting for new metaphors. Then I found out that really good metaphors are always the same.

PhilosophyExerciseThere is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe; with the passage of the years it becomes a mere chapter if not a paragraph or a name in the history of philosophy.

BooksMeaningLibrariesI know of one semibarbarous zone whose librarians repudiate the "vain and superstitious habit" of trying to find sense in books, equating such a quest with attempting to find meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines on the palms of one's hand.

LiteratureIdealismIn fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects.

AmbitionAchievementWritingComparisonLike all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.

InfluenceWritingPoetryLanguageReadingI think of myself primarily as a reader, then also a writer, but that's more or less irrelevant. I think I'm a good reader, I'm a good reader in many languages, especially in English, since poetry came to me through the English language, initially through my father's love of Swinburn, of Tennyson, and also of Keats, Shelley and so on - not through my native tongue, not through Spanish. It came to me as a kind of spell. I didn't understand it, but I felt it.

АнгелиDisciplineHumanityForgettingCaptivated by its discipline, humanity forgets and goes on forgetting that it is the discipline of chess players, not of angels.

The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.

LovePoetryFeelingThe aesthetic event is something as evident, as immediate, as indefinable as love, the taste of fruit, of water. We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it with other words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings?

VocabularyIn the critics' vocabulary, the work 'precursor' is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemics or rivalry.

InterpretationLiteratureOne literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.

UnderstandingThe machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men.

LegacyMortalityMemoryWhat will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?

PhilosophyInfluenceLiteratureI have used the philosophers' ideas for my own private literary purposes, but I don't think that I'm a thinker. I suppose that my thinking has been done for me by Berkeley, by Hume, by Schopenhauer, by Mauthner perhaps.

FriendshipRelationshipsMy father and he had cemented one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.

Writing StyleGrammarComplexityHe constructed a vast labyrinthine of periods, made impassable by the piling-up of clauses upon clauses-clauses in which oversight and bad grammar seemed manifestations of disdain.

At the beginning of their careers many writers have a need to overwrite. They choose carefully turned-out phrases; they want to impress their readers with their large vocabularies. By the excesses of their language, these young men and women try to hide their sense of inexperience. With maturity the writer becomes more secure in his ideas. He finds his real tone and develops a simple and effective style.

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

ReadingLiteratureIn the course of a life devoted less to living than to reading, I have verified many times that literary intentions and theories are nothing more than stimuli and that the final work usually ignores or even contradicts them.

Personal ResponsibilityJorge Luis BorgesKafka had the sense of guilt. I don't think I have because I don't believe in free will. Because what I have done has been done, well, for me or through me. But I haven't done it really. But I don't believe in free will, I can't feel guilty.

I don't think esthetic schools are important. What is important is the use that is made of them, or whatever the individual writer does.

TimeCreativityThere are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once.

ArtCreativityWritersI'm not interested in the fact that a writer may label himself as being intellectual or anti-intellectual. l'm really interested in the stuff he's turning out.

WorldImaginationFictionI came to the idea of how fine it would be to think of an encyclopedia of an actual world, and then of an encyclopedia, a very rigorous one of course, of an imaginary world, where everything should be linked.

ЛіньCreativityCharacter DevelopmentWriting ProcessAlthough I'm very lazy when it comes to writing, I'm not that lazy when it comes to thinking. I like to develop the plan of a short story, then cut it as short as possible, try to evolve all the necessary details. I know far more about the characters than what actually comes out of the writing.

I think it's all to the good that a writer shouldn't be too famous. Because, in a country where a writer may be famous, he may be pandering to the mob, celebrity and so on.

Novel WritingThe central problem of novel-writing is causality.

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

HistoryIt may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.

PhilosophyPersonal BeliefsLiteratureI have no personal system of philosophy. I never attempt to do that. I am merely a man of letters.

InterestRealityYou will reply that reality hasn't the slightest need to be of interest. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not. In the hypothesis you have postulated, chance intervenes largely. Here lies a dead rabbi; I should prefer a purely rabbinical explanation; not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber.

LibraryIn truth, the Library includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted by the twenty-five orthographical symbols, but not a single example of absolute nonsense.

Jorge Luis BorgesThe mathematical sciences wield their particular language made of digits and signs, no less subtle than any other.