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 BORGESThen I reflect that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me.
More Jorge Luis Borges Quotes
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You may win your heart’s desire, but in the end you’re cheated of it by death.
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Everything touches everything.
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The original is unfaithful to the translation.
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Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I’d rather boast about the ones I’ve read.
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To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we’ll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
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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 -
In Spanish it is very difficult to make things flow, because words are over-long. But in English, you have light words.
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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.
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To arrange a library is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism.
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I saw a sunset in Queretaro that seemed to reflect the color of a rose in Bengal.
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A writer – and, I believe, generally all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource.
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There is an hour of the afternoon when the plain is on the verge of saying something. It never says, or perhaps it says it infinitely, or perhaps we do not understand it, or we understand it and it is untranslatable as music.
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Art is endless like a river flowing, passing, yet remaining.
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A writer’s work is the product of laziness.
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A poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.
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I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets.
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?
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We accept reality so readily – perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.
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To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.
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Don’t talk unless you can improve the silence.
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I never reread what I’ve written. I’m far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I’ve done.
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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.
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He consorted with prostitutes and poets and with persons even worse.
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My undertaking is not difficult, essentially. I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.
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Each thing implies the universe.
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The mightiest love was granted him Love that does not expect to be loved.
JORGE LUIS BORGES