Jorge Luis BorgesThe original is unfaithful to the translation. ✨ Sobre el Vathekde William Beckford (1943) in Obras Completas (1974) p. 730372Hope
Jorge Luis BorgesReality is not always probable, or likely. ✨ Worldwide Laws of Life : 200 Eternal Spiritual Principles. Book by John Templeton, 1998.362LifePoliticsReading
Jorge Luis BorgesTime broadens the scope of verses and I know of some which, like music, are everything for all men. ✨ Jorge Luis Borges (1964). Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings… ▶362Time
Jorge Luis BorgesIn vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman’s eyes. You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, y… ▶352Thought
Jorge Luis BorgesI have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks. ✨ The Garden of Forking Paths. Book by Jorge Luis Borges, 1942.363PoliticsReading
Jorge Luis BorgesI 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. ✨ Jorg… ▶363Thought
Jorge Luis BorgesReality is not always probable, or likely. But if you're writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader's imagination will reject it. 341LifePoliticsReading
Jorge Luis BorgesDictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy. ✨ Statement to the Argent… ▶341HumanityPoliticsTruth
Jorge Luis BorgesEvery novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality. ✨ Jorge Luis Borges (1964). Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings, p.194, New Directions Publishing… ▶342ReadingThoughtTruth
Jorge Luis BorgesThe dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.353Humor
Jorge Luis BorgesI 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 Lu… ▶342ThoughtTime
Jorge Luis BorgesHe 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 (1964). Labyr… ▶331Death
Jorge Luis BorgesYou 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.364Time
Jorge Luis BorgesA writer, or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an instrument; everything has been given for an end. This is even stronger in the case of the artist. Everything… ▶331Politics
Jorge Luis BorgesWhatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. For that reason, it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; for that reason it is not u… ▶364DeathHumanity
Jorge Luis BorgesBeing 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 … ▶331Life
Jorge Luis BorgesTruth never penetrates an unwilling mind.364ThoughtTruth
Jorge Luis BorgesWhoever 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 … ▶375HopeReadingTime
Jorge Luis BorgesLiterature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. ✨ Jorge Luis Borges, Donald A. Yates, James East Irby (1964). Labyrinths: Sele… ▶342Reading
Jorge Luis BorgesWe are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe. ✨ Jorge Luis Borges, Margarita Guerrero, Norman Thomas Di Giovanni (1970). The book… ▶342PhilosophyReading
Jorge Luis BorgesCensorship is the mother of metaphor.342Love
Jorge Luis BorgesThe visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it. ✨ 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis, Tert… ▶343Thought
Jorge Luis BorgesThe gods weave misfortunes for men, so that the generations to come will have something to sing about.” Mallarmé repeats, less beautifully, what Homer said; “tout aboutit en un li… ▶354ReadingThought
Jorge Luis BorgesA 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. ✨ Sean Kernan, Jo… ▶354DeathReading
Jorge Luis BorgesThe Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb. ✨ In 'Time' 14 February 1983376Time
Jorge Luis BorgesNothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.343Thought
Jorge Luis BorgesHow can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives? ✨ Jorge Luis Borges, Eliot Weinberger (1999). Selected Non-fictions, Viking Press321Life
Jorge Luis BorgesEvery writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. ✨ Kafka and His Precursors (1951) (translation by James … ▶311HopeTime
Jorge Luis BorgesHis life, measured in space and time, will take up a mere few lines, which my ignorance will abbreviate further. ✨ Jorge Luis Borges, Eliot Weinberger (1999). Selected Non-f… ▶377LifeTime
Jorge Luis BorgesI cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.377Reading
