153 quotes
It is clear that there is no classification of the Universe that is not arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what kind of thing the universe is.
Do you want to see what human eyes have never seen? Look at the moon. Do you want to hear what ears have never heard? Listen to the bird's cry. Do you want to touch what hands have never touched? Touch the earth. Verily I say that God is about to create the world.
Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself.
Autobiographical Notes (1970)
There is no syllable one can speak that is not filled with tenderness and terror, that is not, in one of those languages, the mighty name of a god.
I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths.
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)
Being conservative is a way of being skeptic.
My advanced age has taught me the resignation of being Borges.
Dr. Brodie's Report [El informe de Brodie (1970)
I have known that thing the Greeks knew not – uncertainty.
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)
The central problem of novel-writing is causality.
Discussion (1932)
If Dahlmann was without hope, he was also without fear.
Ficciones (1944)
A Chinese prose writer has observed that the unicorn, because of its own anomaly, will pass unnoticed. Our eyes see what they are accustomed to seeing.
Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety.
Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.
Preface to Dr. Brodie's Report [El informe de Brodie (1970)
When one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a man that observes and narrates it and no longer the man that performed it.
The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that, sooner or later, all men will do and know all things.
Ficciones (1944)
What one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men. For that reason a disobedience committed in a garden contaminates the human race; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew suffices to save it.
Ficciones (1944)
The future is inevitable and precise, but it may not occur. God lurks in the gaps.
Let heaven exist, though my own place may be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification.
Besides, time, which despoils castles, enriches verses . . . Time broadens the scope of verses and I know of some which, like music, are everything for all men.
Averroës' Search (1949)
Truly fine poetry must be read aloud.
The Divine Comedy (1977)