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How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?

Jorge Luis Borges

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
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
In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Adultery Inform Sacrifice Tenderness University
Films are even stranger, for what we are seeing are not disguised people but photographs of disguised people, and yet we believe them while the film is being shown.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Believe Disguise Movie People Photograph Stranger
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
Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Art Oral Poetry Remember Writing
Truth never penetrates an unwilling mind.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Mindset Truth Willing
The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Fact Poetry Possible Word
The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Fiction Fight Funny Literature Story
A writer – and, I believe, generally all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Believe Myself Resource Writing
The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Affirmation Earth Errors Mistake
Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Future Science Time
There is no point in being overwhelmed by the appalling total of human sufferring; such a total does not exist. Neither poverty nor pain is accumulable.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Human Pain Point Suffering
Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Action Deserve Heaven Hell Man Myself
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
He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Expression Finding Mention Rose Word
When I write, I do it urged by an intimate necessity. I don’t have in mind an exclusive public, or a public of multitudes, I don’t think in either thing. I think about expressing what I want to say. I try to do it in the simplest way possible.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Expression Intimate Myself Necessary Possible Simplicity Writing
I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Book Myself Sleep
Then I reflect that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Man Present Reflection Time Yourself
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
We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Conversation Death Forget Man
The future has no other reality than as present hope, and the past is no more than present memory.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Future Hope Memories Present Reality
Life itself is a quotation.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Life One Liner
Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Flight Himself Life Lose
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
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
There’s no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Build Need Oneself Universe

How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?

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How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?

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