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

I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.

Jorge Luis Borges

We spend our lives waiting for our book and it never comes.

Jorge Luis Borges

I owe my first inkling of the problem of infinity to a large biscuit tin that was a source of vertiginous mystery during my childhood.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Jorge Luis Borges

La duda es uno de los nombres de la inteligencia.

Jorge Luis Borges

The three of them knew it. She was Kafka’s mistress. Kafka had dreamt her. The three of them knew it. He was Kafka’s friend. Kafka had dreamt him. The three of them knew it. The woman said to the friend, Tonight I want you to have me. The three o...

Jorge Luis Borges

The story of two dreams is a coincidence, a line drawn by chance, like the shapes of lions or horses that are sometimes formed by clouds.

Jorge Luis Borges

You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Jorge Luis Borges

Yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso bajo la especie de una biblioteca.

Jorge Luis Borges

Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than meteors. The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside. Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious and would like to understand them. Their day is greedy as a lariat in the ai...

Jorge Luis Borges

It's a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA.

Jorge Luis Borges

If you sell, say, two thousand copies, it is the same thing as if you had sold nothing at all because two thousand is too vast—I mean, for the imagination to grasp. While thirty-seven people—perhaps thirty-seven are too many, perhaps seventeen wo...

Jorge Luis Borges

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

Jorge Luis Borges

Little did they suspect that the years would end by wearing away the disharmony. Little did they suspect that La Mancha and Montiel and the knight's frail figure would be, for the future, no less poetic than Sinbad's haunts or Ariosto's vast geograph...

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Jorge Luis Borges

In Sumatra, someone wishes to receive a doctorate in prophecy. The master seer who administers his exam asks if he will fail or pass. the candidate replies that he will fail. ... One can already foresee the infinite continuation.

Jorge Luis Borges

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

Jorge Luis Borges

Ferrari: How odd, Borges, it seems that we are talking constantly through memory. Sometimes, our conversations remind me of a dialogue between two memories. Borges: In fact, that’s what it is. If we are something, we are our past, aren’t we? Our ...

Jorge Luis Borges

There is an hour of the afternoon when the plain is on the verge of saying something. It never says, or perhaps it says it infinitely, or perhaps we do not understand it, or we understand it and it is untranslatable as music.

Jorge Luis Borges

Which one of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?

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