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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

Reality is partial to symmetry and slight anachronisms
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Partial Reality Symmetry
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 future is as irrevocable as an inflexible yesterday.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Future Past
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
Reality is not always probable, or likely.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Probability Reality
A writer should have another lifetime to see if he’s appreciated.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Appreciation Life Poet Time Writing
Your unforgivable sins do not allow you to see my splendor.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Allow Forgiveness Myself See Sin
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
I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Earth Mirror Myself Reflection See
The sea is an idiom I cannot decipher.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Literature Metaphor Myself Sea
Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but hypotheses may not.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Avoid Interest Obligation Reality
The future is inevitable and precise, but it may not occur. God lurks in the gaps.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Future God Occur Weapon
Art is endless like a river flowing, passing, yet remaining.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Art Creativity End River
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
It means much to have loved, to have been happy, to have laid my hand on the living Garden, even for a day.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Day Garden Hands Live Love
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
I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Love Myself Reading Travel Visit Woman Writing
The word happiness exists in every language; it is plausible the thing itself exists.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Happiness Word
To arrange a library is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Arrangement Criticism Practice Quiet
Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Future Science Time
Many of the characters are fools and they’re always playing tricks on me and treating me badly.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Character Fools Myself Play Trick
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
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
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
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
In my next life I will try to commit more errors.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Commitment Life Mistake Myself
May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Heaven Hell Place

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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