black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.

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

Ease Friendship Minority Myself Time 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
Loneliness does not worry me; life is difficult enough, putting up with yourself and with your own habits.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Habit Life Lonely Worry Yourself
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
A poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Discover Invention Poet
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
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
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
No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Identity Immortal Man Myself Personality Philosophy
In Spanish it is very difficult to make things flow, because words are over-long. But in English, you have light words.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Difficult Light Spanish Word Yourself
I had always thought of Paradise / In form and image as a library.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Form Heaven Library Myself Paradise Thinking
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
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

Creature Divine Ignorance Immortal Man Myself Terrible
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
When I wake up, I wake to something worse. It’s the astonishment of being myself.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Astonishment Myself Wake Up Worst
A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Book Perspective Relationship

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Jorge Luis Borges Quotes