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The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said.

Jorge Luis Borges

When you come right down to it, opinions are the most superficial things about anyone.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Opinion Right Yourself
Reality is partial to symmetry and slight anachronisms
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Partial Reality Symmetry
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
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 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
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
Truth never penetrates an unwilling mind.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Mindset Truth Willing
Man’s memory shapes Its own Eden within.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Man Memories Shape
Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I’d rather boast about the ones I’ve read.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Oneself Page Pride Reading Writing
Whoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Accomplishment Future Past
Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Consume Fire Myself River Substance Time
I have preferred to teach my students not English literature but my love for certain authors, or, even better, certain pages, or even better than that, certain lines. One falls in love with a line, then with a page, then with an author. Well, why not? It is a beautiful process.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Beautiful Better Fall In Love Literature Preference Student Teaching
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
When I wake up, I wake to something worse. It’s the astonishment of being myself.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Astonishment Myself Wake Up Worst
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 gazed at every mirror on the planet, not one gave back my reflection.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Mirror Myself Planet Reflection

The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said.

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The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said.

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