Jorge Luis Borges Quotes

240 Sourced Quotes

The future is inevitable and precise, but it may not occur. God lurks in the gaps.

Jorge Luis Borges
In 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, you have not written the poem.

Jorge Luis Borges
The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men.

Jorge Luis Borges
You boil it in saw dust: you salt it in glue: You condense it with locust and tape: Still keeping one principle object in view - To preserve its symmetrical shape.

Jorge Luis Borges
In truth, the Library includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted by the twenty-five orthographical symbols, but not a single example of absolute nonsense.

Jorge Luis Borges
The minotaur more than justifies the existence of the labyrinth.

Jorge Luis Borges
Blindness has not been for me a total misfortune; it should not be seen in a pathetic way. It should be seen as a way of life: one of the styles of living.

Jorge Luis Borges
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
In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.

Jorge Luis Borges
A man gradually identifies himself with the form of his fate; a man is, in the long run, his own circumstances.

Jorge Luis Borges
I know of a wild region whose librarians repudiate the vain superstitious custom of seeking any sense in books and compare it to looking for meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of one's hands... They admit that the inventors of writing imitated the twenty-five natural symbols, but they maintain that this application is accidental and that books in themselves mean nothing. This opinion - we shall see - is not altogether false.

Jorge Luis Borges
I know that when I think of myself as being utterly worn out, when I think that somehow I have nothing more to write, then something is happening within me. And, in due course, it bubbles up; it comes to the surface, and then I do my best to listen. But there's nothing mystical about all this. I suppose all writers do the same.

Jorge Luis Borges
In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others.

Jorge Luis Borges
Besides, time, which despoils castles, enriches verses... Time broadens the scope of verses and I know of some which, like music, are everything for all men.

Jorge Luis Borges
We all think that fate has dealt us a wretched sort of lot in life, and that others must be better. [...] I presume that in the heaven of the Blessèd there are those who believe that the advantages of that locale are much exaggerated by theologists, who have never been there themselves.

Jorge Luis Borges