Jorge Luis Borges quotes - page 9

You will reply that reality hasn't the slightest need to be of interest. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not. (Jorge Luis Borges)
Not the day when the Saxon said the words, but the day when an enemy perpetuated them, was the historic date. A date that is a prophecy of something still in the future: the day when races and nations will be cast into oblivion, and the solidarity of all mankind will be established.
Jorge Luis Borges
Their language and the derivations of their language - religion, letters, metaphysics - all presuppose idealism. The world for them is not a concourse of objects in space; it is a heterogeneous series of independent acts. It is successive and temporal, not spatial.
Jorge Luis Borges
What one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men.
Jorge Luis Borges
The impossibility of penetrating the divine pattern of the universe cannot stop us from planning human patterns, even though we are conscious they are not definitive.
Jorge Luis Borges
If Dahlmann was without hope, he was also without fear.
Jorge Luis Borges
The aesthetic event is something as evident, as immediate, as indefinable as love, the taste of fruit, of water.
Jorge Luis Borges
His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.
Jorge Luis Borges
Paradise will be a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges
To think, analyze and invent are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence.
Jorge Luis Borges
The years go by, and I've told the story so many times that I'm not sure anymore whether I actually remember it or whether I just remember the words I tell it with. (Jorge Luis Borges)
With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another.
Jorge Luis Borges
It is known that Whistler when asked how long it took him to paint one of his "nocturnes" answered: "All of my life."
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
Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art.
Jorge Luis Borges
I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks.
Jorge Luis Borges
Reality is not always probable, or likely.
Jorge Luis Borges
In general, every country has the language it deserves.
Jorge Luis Borges
Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.
Jorge Luis Borges
One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite.
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)
Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.
Jorge Luis Borges
The aesthetic event is something as evident, as immediate, as indefinable as love, the taste of fruit, of water. We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it with other words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings?
Jorge Luis Borges
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.
Jorge Luis Borges
In the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.
Jorge Luis Borges