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A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships

Jorge Luis Borges

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
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
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 general, every country has the language it deserves.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Country Deserve Language
A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Drawing Face Man Portray
I am not sure of anything, I know nothing. Can you imagine that I don’t even know the date of my own death?
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Date Death Imagination Known Yourself
To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we’ll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Immortal Invention Known Man Play Separate Way
A system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to any one of such aspects.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Aspect System Universe
We accept reality so readily – perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Acceptance Reality Thinking
You can’t measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Day Different Measurement Money Time
Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Doubt Fake Memories Process Reflection School
Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Love Measurement Myself Relationship Time Yourself
When I feel I’m going to write something, then I just am quiet and I try to listen. Then something comes through. And I do what I can in order not to tamper with it.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Feeling Listening Myself Order Writing
We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes, that pile of broken mirrors.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Memories Mirror Museum Shape
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

A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships

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A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships

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