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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

Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I’d rather boast about the ones I’ve read.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Oneself Page Pride Reading Writing
We accept reality so readily – perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Acceptance Reality Thinking
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
It means much to have loved, to have been happy, to have laid my hand on the living Garden, even for a day.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Day Garden Hands Live Love
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
When you come right down to it, opinions are the most superficial things about anyone.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Opinion Right Yourself
I have committed the worst of sins one can commit. I have not been happy.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Commitment Happiness Myself Sin Worst
Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Books Existence Fools Ideas Summary Writing
The word happiness exists in every language; it is plausible the thing itself exists.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Happiness Word
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
I saw a sunset in Queretaro that seemed to reflect the color of a rose in Bengal.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Color Reflection Rose
A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Book Perspective Relationship
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
The future is inevitable and precise, but it may not occur. God lurks in the gaps.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Future God Occur Weapon
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 BORGES

Art Embarrassment Fortune Improvement Ourselves
Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing, the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Anxiety Beyond Inspirational Invitation Myself Universe
When I wake up, I wake to something worse. It’s the astonishment of being myself.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Astonishment Myself Wake Up Worst
I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text; he should change it into something else.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Himself Misunderstanding Reading Thinking
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
Censorship is the mother of metaphor.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Hide Metaphor Mom
Every man should be capable of all ideas.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Capable Ideas Man
A system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to any one of such aspects.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Aspect System Universe
One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Confusion Corruption Infinite Limitation
A writer’s work is the product of laziness.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Lazy Poet Work Writing
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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Goodness Prayer Religious Secret
If I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father’s library.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Father Library Life Name
No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Identity Immortal Man Myself Personality Philosophy

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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