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In general, every country has the language it deserves.

Jorge Luis Borges

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
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
Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Art Oral Poetry Remember Writing
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
May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Heaven Hell Place
Life itself is a quotation.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Life One Liner
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
Perhaps the apparent favor of the universe is no more than the crocodile grin of a Doberman breathing hard and about to be hungry?
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Breathe Hungry Universe
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

Date Death Imagination Known Yourself
Every man should be capable of all ideas.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Capable Ideas Man
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
The original is unfaithful to the translation.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Faith Original Translation
Israelites, 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

Believe Destiny Punishment Religion Reward Secularism World
Only in the present do things happen.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Inspirational Moments Present
To arrange a library is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Arrangement Criticism Practice Quiet
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

In general, every country has the language it deserves.

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In general, every country has the language it deserves.

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