Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (born 24 August 1899, Buenos Aires, Argentina – died 14 June 1986, Geneva, Switzerland) was an Argentine short-story writer, poet, essayist and translator. His works, holding a prominent position in world literature are considered to be among the classics of 20th century. Jorge Luis Borges most famous works include 'Universal History of Infamy' (1935), 'Ficciones' (1944), 'The Aleph' (1949), and 'The Book of Sand' (1975). His works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to both the fantasy and magical realism genres.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.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.I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.Each thing implies the universe.Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've readWhen writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line.
A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
Jorge Luis Borges
Doubt is one of the names of intelligence.The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library... Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.I don’t speak of vengeance, nor of forgiving; forgetting is the only revenge and the only forgiveness.The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.Truth never penetrates an unwilling mind.Democracy is an abuse of statistics.To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one.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.The future has no other reality than as present hope, and the past is no more than present memory.To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.
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
We accept reality so readily – perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.I have committed the worst of sins one can commit. I have not been happy.Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.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.What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.Life itself is a quotation.Only in the present do things happen.Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.
A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.
Jorge Luis Borges
Of all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination.
Jorge Luis Borges
It means much to have loved, to have been happy, to have laid my hand on the living Garden, even for a day.In my next life I will try to commit more errors.From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me.All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.Poets, like the blind, can see in the dark.Reality is not always probable, or likely.Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.If space is infinite, we may be at any point in space. If time is infinite, we may be at any point in time.The original is unfaithful to the translation.
A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
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.
