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Jorge Luis Borges

Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Feeling Forever Himself Life Man Moments Realize
For me, beauty is a physical sensation, something we feel with our whole body. It is not the result of judgement. We do not arrive at it by way of rules. We either feel beauty or we don’t.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Beautiful Feeling Judgement Ourselves Result
Don’t talk unless you can improve the silence.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Improvement Silence Talk Yourself
A poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Discover Invention Poet
While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Awake Fantasy Philosophy Science World
Death is just infinity closing in.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Close Death Infinite
I suppose identity depends on memory. And if my memory is blotted out, then I wonder if I exist – I mean, if I am the same person. Of course, I don’t have to solve that problem. It’s up to God, if any.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Identity Memories Problem Solution
It also occurred to him that throughout history, humankind has told two stories: the story of a lost ship sailing the Mediterranean seas in quest of a beloved isle, and the story of a god who allows himself to be crucified on Golgotha.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Allow Himself History Human Sea
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

Dreams Feeling Horror Sensation
Time is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Consume Fire Myself Time
What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Missing Value Yourself
We have a very precise image – an image at times shameless – of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Image Lost Replacement Shame Time
We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes, that pile of broken mirrors.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Memories Mirror Museum Shape
I am not sure of anything, I know nothing. Can you imagine that I don’t even know the date of my own death?
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Date Death Imagination Known Yourself
To arrange a library is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Arrangement Criticism Practice Quiet
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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Immortal Invention Known Man Play Separate Way

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