I think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love.
JORGE LUIS BORGESI think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love.
JORGE LUIS BORGESI gazed at every mirror on the planet, not one gave back my reflection.
JORGE LUIS BORGESTo 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.
JORGE LUIS BORGESYou may win your heart’s desire, but in the end you’re cheated of it by death.
JORGE LUIS BORGESDictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.
JORGE LUIS BORGESIt is clear that there is no classification of the Universe that is not arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what kind of thing the universe is.
JORGE LUIS BORGESTime is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
JORGE LUIS BORGESWhat you really value is what you miss, not what you have.
JORGE LUIS BORGESI have preferred to teach my students not English literature but my love for certain authors, or, even better, certain pages, or even better than that, certain lines. One falls in love with a line, then with a page, then with an author. Well, why not? It is a beautiful process.
JORGE LUIS BORGESHe thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.
JORGE LUIS BORGESArt is very mysterious. I wonder if you can really do any damage to art. I think that when we’re writing, something comes through or should come through, in spite of our theories. So theories are not really important.
JORGE LUIS BORGESIn all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others.
JORGE LUIS BORGESI never reread what I’ve written. I’m far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I’ve done.
JORGE LUIS BORGESLet others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I’d rather boast about the ones I’ve read.
JORGE LUIS BORGESA book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships
JORGE LUIS BORGESIsraelites, Christians and Muslims profess immortality, but the veneration they render this world proves they believe only in it, since they destine all other worlds, in infinite number, to be its reward or punishment.
JORGE LUIS BORGES