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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

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
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
So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Decoration Flower Garden Plant Self Love Soul Yourself
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
Reality favors symmetry.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Reality Symmetry
Each thing implies the universe.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

One Liner Universe
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
Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Cruelty Dictatorship Fact Leadership Oppression Politics
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

Consume Fire Myself River Substance Time
In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Choice Expense Face Fiction Man
It 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 BORGES

Known Reason Simplicity Universe
You can’t measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Day Different Measurement Money Time
Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Happiness Live Love Lover
Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Dreams Guide 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

I am not sure of anything, I know nothing. Can you imagine that I don’t even know the date of my own death?

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I am not sure of anything, I know nothing. Can you imagine that I don’t even know the date of my own death?

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