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What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.

Jorge Luis Borges

The man who acquires an encyclopedia does not thereby acquire every line, every paragraph, every page, and every illustration; he acquires the possibility of becoming familiar with one and another of those things.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Book Himself Knowledge Man Possibility
Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Ideas Novel Plane Reality
Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but hypotheses may not.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Avoid Interest Obligation Reality
A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Drawing Face Man Portray
The mightiest love was granted him Love that does not expect to be loved.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Expectation Himself Love
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

Day Different Measurement Money Time
To arrange a library is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Arrangement Criticism Practice Quiet
Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Aesthetic Criticism Personal Reading
I have always come to life after coming to books.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Book Feeling Life Myself
The dictionary is based on the hypothesis — obviously an unproven one — that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Dictionary Language Symptoms
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

Country Enemy Garden Man Moments Nature Stream
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

Accomplishment Future Past
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
When one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a man that observes and narrates it and no longer the man that performed it.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Actor Confession Man Observation Oneself Performance
There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Eyes Music Mysterious World
Art is endless like a river flowing, passing, yet remaining.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Art Creativity End River

What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.

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What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.

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