I never reread what I’ve written. I’m far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I’ve done.
JORGE LUIS BORGESI am not sure of anything, I know nothing. Can you imagine that I don’t even know the date of my own death?
More Jorge Luis Borges Quotes
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How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
The sea is an idiom I cannot decipher.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
I think most people are more important than their opinions.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
I ask of any God, of any gods, that if they give immortality, I hope to be granted oblivion also.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Perhaps the apparent favor of the universe is no more than the crocodile grin of a Doberman breathing hard and about to be hungry?
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Blindness has not been for me a total misfortune; it should not be seen in a pathetic way. It should be seen as a way of life: one of the styles of living.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
There’s no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Censorship is the mother of metaphor.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
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 -
When you come right down to it, opinions are the most superficial things about anyone.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Many of the characters are fools and they’re always playing tricks on me and treating me badly.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
A poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
What I’m really concerned about is reaching one person. And that person may be myself for all I know.
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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Every man should be capable of all ideas.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
No one is a poet from eight to twelve and from two to six. Whoever is a poet is one always, and continually assaulted by poetry.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
In our dreams (writes Coleridge) images represent the sensations we think they cause; we do not feel horror because we are threatened by a sphinx; we dream of a sphinx in order to explain the horror we feel.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
I gazed at every mirror on the planet, not one gave back my reflection.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing, the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting.
JORGE LUIS BORGES