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

At the railroad station he noted that he still had thirty minutes. He quickly recalled that in a cafe on the Calle Brazil (a few dozen feet from Yrigoyen's house) there was an enormous cat which allowed itself to be caressed as if it were a disdainfu...

Jorge Luis Borges

There will always be reservations, things one must leave out, events one can’t explain without handing over a full map of one’s life, unfolding it, making clear that all the lines and contours stand for long days and nights when things were bad o...

Jorge Luis Borges

A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humili...

Jorge Luis Borges

Cervantes' text and Menard's are verbally identical; but the second is almost infinitely richer.

Jorge Luis Borges

The metaphysicians of Tlön are not looking for truth, nor even for an approximation of it; they are after a kind of amazement.

Jorge Luis Borges

If we think of the novel and the epic...The difference lies in the fact that the important thing about the epic is a hero--a man who is a pattern for all men. While, as Mencken pointed out, the essence of most novels lies in the breaking down of a ma...

Jorge Luis Borges

Novels include padding; I think padding may be an essential part of the novel, for all I know.

Jorge Luis Borges

Sometimes, 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, O...

Jorge Luis Borges

The truth is that we all live by leaving behind; no doubt we all profoundly know that we are immortal and that sooner or later every man will do all things and know everything.

Jorge Luis Borges

---,all our lives we postpone everything that can be postponed; perhaps we all have the certainty, deep inside, that we are immortal and sooner or later every man will do everything, know all there is to know.

Jorge Luis Borges

To think is to ignore the differences, to generalize, to abstract.

Jorge Luis Borges

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Jorge Luis Borges

To 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.

Jorge Luis Borges

Life and death have been lacking in my life.

Jorge Luis Borges

The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify the future.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Jorge Luis Borges

Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

Jorge Luis Borges

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

I 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.

Jorge Luis Borges

Reality is not always probable, or likely.

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