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While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one.

Jorge Luis Borges

The dictionary is based on the hypothesis — obviously an unproven one — that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Dictionary Language Symptoms
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
When you reach my age, you realize you couldn’t have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Age Better Place Reach Worst Yourself
If space is infinite, we may be at any point in space. If time is infinite, we may be at any point in time.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Infinite Point Space Time
The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Forever Form Ourselves Worst
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

Art Damage Important Mystery Theory Writing Yourself
We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Conversation Death Forget Man
The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all of these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Art Happiness Man Memories Music Transformation
It’s a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Choice Country Shame
The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Immortal Live Truth Willing
You may win your heart’s desire, but in the end you’re cheated of it by death.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Cheating Death Desire End Heart Win
Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing, the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Anxiety Beyond Inspirational Invitation Myself Universe
Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Ideas Novel Plane Reality
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
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
I have always come to life after coming to books.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Book Feeling Life Myself
The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library. Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Book Discover Fact Library Poetry
I think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Book Experience Fall In Love Thinking
Democracy is an abuse of statistics.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Abuse Democracy Statistics
It also occurred to him that throughout history, humankind has told two stories: the story of a lost ship sailing the Mediterranean seas in quest of a beloved isle, and the story of a god who allows himself to be crucified on Golgotha.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Allow Himself History Human Sea
No one is a poet from eight to twelve and from two to six. Whoever is a poet is one always, and continually assaulted by poetry.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Age Oneself Poet Poetry
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
I had always thought of Paradise / In form and image as a library.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Form Heaven Library Myself Paradise Thinking
Everything touches everything.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Connection One Liner Touch
The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Fiction Fight Funny Literature Story
The minotaur more than justifies the existence of the labyrinth.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Justify
I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Detail Memories Myself Night Solitude Thinking Walk

While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one.

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While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one.

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