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Jorge Luis Borges Quotes
1899–1986 Argentina
Jorge Luis Borges (24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine writer who is considered one of the foremost literary figures of the 20th century. Most famous in the English speaking world for his short stories and fictive essays, Borges was also a poet, critic, translator and man of letters.
Argentina Essayists Philosophers Poets Short story writers Also known as: Borges, Borges, Jorge Luis
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153 quotes
Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case.
Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.
Borges Verbal (1999)
Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.
The Divine Comedy (1977)
The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.
The minotaur more than justifies the existence of the labyrinth.
Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.
Myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end.
Dreamtigers (1960)
Fame is a form—perhaps the worst form—of incomprehension.
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)
Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.
Statement to the Argentine Society of Letters (1946)
Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.
May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell.
Time can't be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different.
The time for your labor has been granted.
Ficciones (1944)
Reality is not always probable, or likely. But if you're writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader's imagination will reject it.
As I think of the many myths, there is one that is very harmful, and that is the myth of countries.
I have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification.
Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.
One of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had stated that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of man.
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.
I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.
Dreamtigers (1960)
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