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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

We have a very precise image - an image at times shameless - of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.

Jorge Luis Borges

I suspected once that any human life, however intricate and full it might be, consisted in reality of one moment: the moment when a man knows for all time who he is.

Jorge Luis Borges

The library will endure; it is the universe. As for us, everything has not been written; we are not turning into phantoms. We walk the corridors, searching the shelves and rearranging them, looking for lines of meaning amid leagues of cacophony and i...

Jorge Luis Borges

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries.

Jorge Luis Borges

There are official searchers, inquisitors. I have seen them in the performance of their function: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they speak of a broken stairway which almost killed them; they talk with the librarian of galler...

Jorge Luis Borges

Como todos los hombres de la Biblioteca, he viajado en mi juventud; he peregrinado en busca de un libro, acaso del catálogo de catálogos; ahora que mis ojos casi no pueden descifrar lo que escribo, me preparo a morir a unas pocas leguas del hexágo...

Jorge Luis Borges

The Library is a sphere whose exact centre is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible.

Jorge Luis Borges

They seek neither truth nor likelihood; they seek astonishment. They think metaphysics is a branch of the literature of fantasy

Jorge Luis Borges

Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. For that reason, it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save...

Jorge Luis Borges

Before unearthing this letter, I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite. I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular one. A book whose last page was identical with the first, a book which had the poss...

Jorge Luis Borges

One of the schools of Tlön goes so far as to negate time; it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than as a present hope, that the past has no reality other than as a present memory. Another school declares th...

Jorge Luis Borges

All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare

Jorge Luis Borges

We must not be too prodigal with our angels; they are the last divinities we harbor, and they might fly away.

Jorge Luis Borges

... in art nothing is more secondary than the author's intentions.

Jorge Luis Borges

I reread these negative remarks and realize that I do not know whether music can despair of music or marble of marble. I do know that literature is an art that can foresee the time when it will be silenced, an art that can become inflamed with its ow...

Jorge Luis Borges

Personally, 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.

Jorge Luis Borges

The gods weave misfortunes for men, so that the generations to come will have something to sing about.” Mallarmé repeats, less beautifully, what Homer said; “tout aboutit en un livre,” everything ends up in a book. The Greeks speak of generati...

Jorge Luis Borges

I think—the hero observes that nothing is so frightening as a labyrinth with no center.

Jorge Luis Borges

The thought came over me that never would one full and absolute moment, containing all the others, justify my life, that all of my instants would be provisional phases, annihilators of the past turned to face the future, and that beyond the episodic,...

Jorge Luis Borges

He [Omar Khayyam] is an atheist, but knows how to interpret in orthodox style the most difficult passages of the Koran; for every educated man is a theologian and faith is not a requisite.

Jorge Luis Borges

I...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 doe...

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