If I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father’s library.
JORGE LUIS BORGESTo say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we’ll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
More Jorge Luis Borges Quotes
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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 -
I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as ‘The Masses’. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
A writer should have another lifetime to see if he’s appreciated.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Art 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 BORGES -
In general, every country has the language it deserves.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
To 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 BORGES -
To arrange a library is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
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 -
Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
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 -
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 -
The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.
JORGE LUIS BORGES -
Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.
JORGE LUIS BORGES