Quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

About Jorge Luis Borges:

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature. His work embraces the "character of unreality in all literature". His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and El Aleph (The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Literary critics have described Borges as Latin America's monumental writer.
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It 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.

Jorge Luis Borges

So my life is a point-counterpoint, a kind of fugue, and a falling away–and everything winds up being lost to me, and everything falls into oblivion, or into the hands of the other man.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Jorge Luis Borges

All things left her, all But one. Her highborn courtliness Accompanied her to the end, Beyond the rapture and its eclipse, In a way like an angel's. Of Elvira The first thing that I saw - such years ago - Was her smile and also it was the last.

Jorge Luis Borges

There is a line in Verlaine I shall not recall again, There is a street close by forbidden to my feet, There's a mirror that's seen me for the very last time, There is a door that I have locked till the end of the world. Among the books in my library...

Jorge Luis Borges

He 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.

Jorge Luis Borges

Leaving 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.

Jorge Luis Borges

And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I dream. Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; now that I have unlimited power, I am going to create a tiger. Oh incompetence! Never do my dreams engender the wild ...

Jorge Luis Borges

It must be that I am not made to be a dead man, but these places and this discussion seem like a dream, and not a dream dreamed by me but by someone else still to be born.

Jorge Luis Borges

God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and he understood the reasons, and accepted his destiny; but when he awoke there was only a dark resignation, a valiant ignorance, for the machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplic...

Jorge Luis Borges

Man's memory shapes Its own Eden within

Jorge Luis Borges

Out of this city marched armies that seemed to be great, and afterwards were when glory had magnified them. As the years went by, an occasional soldier returned, and with a foreign trace to his speech, told tales of what had happened to him in places...

Jorge Luis Borges

There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.

Jorge Luis Borges

Puis il réfléchit: la réalité ne coïncide habituellement pas avec les prévisions; avec une logique perverse, il en déduisit que prévoir un détail circonstanciel, c'est empêcher que celui-ci se réalise. Fidèle à cette faible magie, il inv...

Jorge Luis Borges

Blind to all fault, destiny can be ruthless at one's slightest distraction.

Jorge Luis Borges

There are objects made up of two sense elements, one visual, the other auditory—the colour of a sunrise and the distant call of a bird. Other objects are made up of many elements—the sun, the water against the swimmer's chest, the vague quivering...

Jorge Luis Borges

Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures and in one of them I am your enemy.

Jorge Luis Borges

Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process.

Jorge Luis Borges

It is generally understood that a modern-day book may honorably be based upon an older one, especially since, as Dr. Johnson observed, no man likes owing anything to his contemporaries. The repeated but irrelevant points of congruence between Joyce's...

Jorge Luis Borges

En av lärorna på Tlön går så långt att den förnekar tiden: den tänker sig att nuet är oändligt, att framtiden inte är verklig annat än som en förväntan i nuet, att det förflutna inte är verkligt annat än som ett minne i nuet.

Jorge Luis Borges

From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me.

Jorge Luis Borges

Author Bio

  • NameJorge Luis Borges
  • DescriptionArgentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature.
  • AliasesJorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges; Jorge Luis Borges
  • BornAugust 24, 1899
  • DiedJune 14, 1986
  • CountryArgentina
  • ProfessionTranslator; Poet; Linguist; Librarian; Literary Critic; Screenwriter; Essayist; Short Story Writer; Writer
  • AwardsGrand Merit Cross Of The Order Of Merit Of The Federal Republic Of Germany; Knight Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire; Prix Mondial Cino Del Duca; Legion Of Honour; Prix Formentor; World Fantasy Award For Life Achievement; Order Of Merit Of The Italian Republic; Alfonso Reyes International Prize; Jerusalem Prize; Miguel De Cervantes Prize; Balzan Prize