Jorge Luis Borges Quotes

I believe the secret of the success of psychoanalysis resides in people's vanity.

What you really value is what you miss not what you have.

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

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

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

Jorge Luis Borges

Unappreciated because too many of his [Rudyard Kipling's] peers were socialists.

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 geographies.For myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end.

Jorge Luis Borges

Day and night, their frail and crippled ships defy the tempest.

Jorge Luis Borges

As to whether a poem has been written by a great poet or not, this is important only to historians of literature. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that I have written a beautiful line; let us take this as a working hypothesis. Once I have written it, that linedoes me no good, because, as I’ve already said, that line came to me from the Holy Ghost, from the subliminal self, or perhaps from some other writer. I often find I am merely quoting something I read some time ago, and then that becomes a rediscovering. Perhaps it is better that a poet should be nameless.

Jorge Luis Borges

Patriotism, that least discerning of pas

Jorge Luis Borges

All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Jorge Luis Borges

I never reread what I've written. I'm far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I've done.

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

. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.Suárez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658

Jorge Luis Borges

Learning After some time, you learn the subtle difference betweenholding a handand imprisoning a soul;You learn that love does not equal sex,and that company does not equal security,and you start to learn….That kisses are not contracts and gifts are not promises, and you start to accept defeat with the head up highand open eyes,and you learn to build all roads on today,because the terrain of tomorrow is too insecure for plans…and the future has its own way of falling apart in half.And you learn that if it’s too mucheven the warmth of the sun can burn.So you plant your own garden and embellish your own soul,instead of waiting for someone to bring flowers to you.And you learn that you can actually bear hardship,that you are actually strong,and you are actually worthy,and you learn and learn…and so every day.Over time you learn that being with someonebecause they offer you a good future,means that sooner or later you’ll want to return to your past.Over time you comprehend that only who is capable of loving you with your flaws, with no intention of changing youcan bring you all happiness.Over time you learn that if you are with a persononly to accompany your own solitude, irremediably you’ll end up wishing not to see them again.Over time you learn that real friends are fewand whoever doesn’t fight for them, sooner or later,will find himself surrounded only with false friendships.Over time you learn that words spoken in moments of angercontinue hurting throughout a lifetime.Over time you learn that everyone can apologize,but forgiveness is an attribute solely of great souls.Over time you comprehend that if you have hurt a friend harshlyit is very likely that your friendship will never be the same.Over time you realize that despite being happy with your friends,you cry for those you let go.Over time you realize that every experience lived, with each person, is unrepeatable.Over time you realize that whoever humiliatesor scorns another human being, sooner or laterwill suffer the same humiliations or scorn in tenfold.Over time you learn to build your roads on today,because the path of tomorrow doesn’t exist.Over time you comprehend that rushing things or forcing them to happencauses the finale to be different form expected.Over time you realize that in fact the best was not the future,but the moment you were living just that instant.Over time you will see that even when you are happy with those around you,you’ll yearn for those who walked away.Over time you will learn to forgive or ask for forgiveness,say you love, say you miss, say you need,say you want to be friends, since beforea grave, it will no longer make sense.But unfortunately, only over time…

Jorge Luis Borges

All things left her, allBut one. Her highborn courtlinessAccompanied her to the end,Beyond the rapture and its eclipse,In a way like an angel's. Of ElviraThe 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 (I have them before me)There are some that I shall never open now.This summer I complete my fiftieth year;Death is gnawing at me ceaselessly.

Jorge Luis Borges

Art is fire plus algebra.

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

I came to abominate my body, I came to sense that two eyes, two hands, two lungs are as monstrous as two faces.

Jorge Luis Borges

The image of the Lord has been replaced by a mirror.

Jorge Luis Borges

When a writer dies, he becomes his books.

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

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 disdainful divinity. He entered the cafe. There was the cat, asleep. He ordered a cup of coffee, slowly stirred the sugar, sipped it (this pleasure had been denied him in the clinic), and thought, as he smoothed the cat's black coat, that this contact was an illusion and that the two beings, man and cat, were as good as separated by a glass, for man lives in time, in succession, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant.

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

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

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 carried out my plan because I felt The Chief had some fear of those of my race, of those uncountable forebears whose culmination lies in me. I wished to prove to him that a yellow man could save his armies.

Jorge Luis Borges

But let no one imagine that we were mere ascetics. There is no more complex pleasure than thought, and it was to thought that we delivered ourselves over.

Jorge Luis Borges

If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Jorge Luis Borges

I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government.

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 man, in the degeneration of character.

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

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

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Jorge Luis Borges

Things, events, that occupy space yet come to an end when someone dies make us stop in wonder - and yet one thing, or an infinite number of things, dies with every man's or woman's death, unless the universe itself has a memory, as theosophists have suggested. In the course of time there was one day that closed the last eyes that had looked on Christ; the battle of Junín and the love of Helen died with the death of one man. What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonio Fernández, 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?

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Jorge Luis Borges

I cannot combine some charactersdhcmrlchtdjwhich the divine Library has not foreseen and which in one of its secret tongues do not contain a terrible meaning. No one can articulate a syllable which is not filled with tenderness and fear, which is not, in one of these languages, the powerful name of a god. To speak is to fall into tautology.

Jorge Luis Borges

There is nothing but quotations left for us. Our language is a system of quotations.

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 incoherence, reading the history of the past and our future, collecting our thoughts and collecting the thoughts of others, and every so often glimpsing mirrors, in which we may recognize creatures of the information.

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 simplicity of a wild beast.Years later, Dante was dying in Ravenna, as unjustified and as lonely as any other man. In a dream, God declared to him the secret purpose of his life and work; Dante, in wonderment, knew at last who and what he was and blessed the bitterness of his life....upon waking, he felt that he had received and lost an infinite thing, something that he would not be able to recuperate or even glimpse, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a man.

Jorge Luis Borges

Lost in these imaginary illusions I forgot my destiny – that of the hunted.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Jorge Luis Borges

Poets, like the blind, can see in the dark.

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

I do not know which of us has written this page.

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

I'm alone and nobody is in the mirror

Jorge Luis Borges

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

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 past is not what can be recorded in a biography or in the newspapers. Our past is our memory. That memory can be hidden or inaccurate—it doesn’t matter. It’s there, isn’t it? It can be a lie but that lie becomes part of our memory, part of us. (Conversations, Vol. 1)

Jorge Luis Borges

A circle drawn on a blackboard, a right triangle, a rhombus--all these are forms we can fully intuit; Ireneo could do the same with the stormy mane of a young colt, a small herd of cattle on a mountainside, a flickering fire and its uncountable ashes, and the many faces of a dead man at a wake. I have no idea how many stars he saw in the sky.

Jorge Luis Borges

We are our memory,we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes,that pile of broken mirrors.

Jorge Luis Borges

Man's memory shapesIts own Eden within

Jorge Luis Borges

Useless to tell myself that a dreamand the memory of yesterday are the same thing

Jorge Luis Borges

One day or one night—between my days and nights, what difference can there be?—I dreamed that there was a grain of sand on the floor of my cell. Unconcerned, I went back to sleep; I dreamed that I woke up and there were two grains of sand. Again I slept; I dreamed that now there were three. Thus the grains of sand multiplied, little by little, until they filled the cell and I was dying beneath that hemisphere of sand. I realized that I was dreaming; with a vast effort I woke myself. But waking up was useless—I was suffocated by the countless sand. Someone said to me: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 the grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.I felt lost. The sand crushed my mouth, but I cried out: I cannot be killed by sand that I dream —nor is there any such thing as a dream within a dream.— Jorge Luis Borges, The Writing of the God

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 would have been better or even seven—but still thirty-seven are still within the scope of one's imagination.

Jorge Luis Borges

I imagined a labyrinth of labyrinths, a maze of mazes, a twisting, turning, ever-widening labyrinth that contained both past and future and somehow implied the stars. Absorbed in those illusory imaginings, I forgot that I was a pursued man; I felt myself, for an indefinite while, the abstract perceiver of the world. The vague, living countryside, the moon, the remains of the day did their work in me; so did the gently downward road, which forestalled all possibility of weariness. The evening was near, yet infinite.

Jorge Luis Borges

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