Jorge Luis Borges Quotes

240 Sourced Quotes

Any life, no matter how long or complex it may be, is made up essentially of a single moment—the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

Jorge Luis Borges
Islam asserts that on the unappealable Day of Judgment every perpetrator of the image of a living creature will be raised from the dead with his works, and he will be commanded to bring them to life, and he will fail, and be cast out with them into the fires of punishment.

Jorge Luis Borges
True and native beauty consists in the just composure and symmetry of the parts of the body.

Jorge Luis Borges
Every writer 'creates' his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

Jorge Luis Borges
We did meet forty years ago. At that time we were both influenced by Whitman and I said, jokingly in part, 'I don't think anything can be done in Spanish, do you?' Neruda agreed, but we decided it was too late for us to write our verse in English. We'd have to make the best of a second-rate literature.

Jorge Luis Borges
You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.

Jorge Luis Borges
I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive

Jorge Luis Borges
To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

Jorge Luis Borges
It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.

Jorge Luis Borges
Captivated by its discipline, humanity forgets and goes on forgetting that it is the discipline of chess players, not of angels.

Jorge Luis Borges
Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

Jorge Luis Borges
"Well, [Lorca had] a gift for gab. For example, he makes striking metaphors, but I think he makes striking metaphors for him, because I think that his world was mostly verbal. I think that he was fond of playing words against each other, the contrast of words, but I wonder if he knew what he was doing."
On Pablo Neruda

Jorge Luis Borges
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
My undertaking is not difficult, essentially... I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.

Jorge Luis Borges
On September 20, 1792, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (who had accompanied the Duke of Weimar on a military expedition to Paris) saw the finest army of Europe inexplicably repulsed at Valmy by some French militiamen, and said to his disconcerted friends: "In this place and on this day, a new epoch in the history of the world is beginning, and we shall be able to say that we have been present at its origin." Since that time historic days have been numerous, and one of the tasks of governments (especially in Italy, Germany, and Russia) has been to fabricate them or to simulate them with an abundance of preconditioning propaganda followed by relentless publicity.

Jorge Luis Borges
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
A 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 that happens, including humiliations, embarrassments, misfortunes, all has been given like clay, like material for one's art. One must accept it.

Jorge Luis Borges
Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their swords, resigned to kill and to die.

Jorge Luis Borges
A labyrinth of symbols... An invisible labyrinth of time.

Jorge Luis Borges
I don't think esthetic schools are important. What is important is the use that is made of them, or whatever the individual writer does.

Jorge Luis Borges
I suppose identity depends on memory. And if my memory is blotted out, then I wonder if I exist - I mean, if I am the same person. Of course, I don't have to solve that problem. It's up to God, if any.

Jorge Luis Borges
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
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
Reality 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.

Jorge Luis Borges
In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?

Jorge Luis Borges