I believe books will never disappear. It is impossible for it to happen. Of all man’s diverse tools, undoubtedly the most astounding are his books… If books were to disappear, history would disappear. So would man.
JORGE LUIS BORGESThe 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.
More Jorge Luis Borges Quotes
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I have always come to life after coming to books.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Then 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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
In general, every country has the language it deserves.
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 -
Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.
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 -
I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as ‘The Masses’. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I’d rather boast about the ones I’ve read.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
The original is unfaithful to the translation.
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 -
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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
The visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
We have stopped believing in progress. What progress that is !
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 -
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 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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
I think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Whoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Films are even stranger, for what we are seeing are not disguised people but photographs of disguised people, and yet we believe them while the film is being shown.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.
JORGE LUIS BORGES