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Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Country Deserve Language
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
Reality is not always probable, or likely.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Probability Reality
I might accept immortality, if I had to do it. But I would prefer – if there is any afterlife – to know nothing whatever about Borges, about his experiences in this world.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Acceptance Experience Immortal World
My undertaking is not difficult, essentially. I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Carry Difficult Essential Immortal Myself
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
To arrange a library is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Arrangement Criticism Practice Quiet
The sea is an idiom I cannot decipher.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Literature Metaphor Myself Sea
The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library. Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Book Discover Fact Library Poetry
The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Fiction Fight Funny Literature Story
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
I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t expect to arrive.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Arrival Expectation Far Slow Walk
The original is unfaithful to the translation.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Faith Original Translation
We have a very precise image – an image at times shameless – of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Image Lost Replacement Shame 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
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
To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Creation Fall Fall In Love God Religion
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
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
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
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
Being an agnostic means all things are possible, even God, even the Holy Trinity. This world is so strange that anything may happen, or may not happen. Being an agnostic makes me live in a larger, a more fantastic kind of world, almost uncanny. It makes me more tolerant.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

God Myself Possible Strange Tolerance World
May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Heaven Hell Place
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
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
What a writer wants to do is not what he does.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Himself Writing

Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.

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Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.

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