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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

The original is unfaithful to the translation.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Faith Original Translation
Censorship is the mother of metaphor.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Hide Metaphor Mom
In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Choice Expense Face Fiction Man
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
Do you want to see what human eyes have never seen? Look at the moon. Do you want to hear what ears have never heard? Listen to the bird’s cry. Do you want to touch what hands have never touched? Touch the earth. Verily I say that God is about to create the world.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Creation Eyes Human Listening World
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
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
A poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Discover Invention Poet
When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Book Death Writing
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
The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Dreams Mindset Perspective World
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
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
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
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 earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Affirmation Earth Errors Mistake
He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Goodness Prayer Religious Secret
Reality favors symmetry.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Reality Symmetry
A writer needs loneliness, and he gets his share of it. He needs love, and he gets shared and also unshared love. He needs friendship. In fact, he needs the universe. To be a writer is, in a sense, to be a day-dreamer – to be living a kind of double life.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Himself Life Live Lonely Need Share Writing
The future has no other reality than as present hope, and the past is no more than present memory.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Future Hope Memories Present Reality
In general, every country has the language it deserves.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Country Deserve Language
I saw a sunset in Queretaro that seemed to reflect the color of a rose in Bengal.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Color Reflection Rose
When I write, I do it urged by an intimate necessity. I don’t have in mind an exclusive public, or a public of multitudes, I don’t think in either thing. I think about expressing what I want to say. I try to do it in the simplest way possible.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Expression Intimate Myself Necessary Possible Simplicity Writing
If I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father’s library.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Father Library Life Name
I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Book Myself Sleep
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
Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Feeling Forever Himself Life Man Moments Realize

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.

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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.

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