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59 Jorge Luis Borges
1 the last color to stand out was yellow because it is the most vivid of colors. That's why you have the Yellow Cab Company in the United States. At first they thought of making the cars scarlet. Then somebody found out that at night or when there was a fog that yellow stood out in a more vivid way than scarlet. So you have yellow cabs because anybody can pick them out. Now when I began to lose my eyesight
1 Jorge Luis Borges
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1:I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #KEYS
2:Life itself is a quotation.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS
3:I'm alone and nobody is in the mirror ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #KEYS
4:Poets, like the blind, can see in the dark. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #KEYS
5:Writing is nothing more than a guided dream. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #KEYS
6:How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS
7:Life and death have been lacking in my life.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, On Writing,#KEYS
8:To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #KEYS
9:We spend our lives waiting for our book and it never comes. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #KEYS
10:I have always imagined that Paradise as a kind of library.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights,#KEYS
11:There is nothing but quotations left for us. Our language is a system of quotations. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #KEYS
12:Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, [T1],#KEYS
13:In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths,#KEYS
14:Lost in these imaginary illusions I forgot my destiny - that of the hunted.~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #KEYS
15:My undertaking is not difficult, essentially. ... I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths,#KEYS
16:All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
17:Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, "Partial Magic in the Quixote", Labyrinths (1964). #KEYS
18:There is no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
19:Like the discovery of love, like the discovery of the sea, the discovery of Dostoevsky marks an important date in one's life. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #KEYS
20:It seemed incredible that this day, a day without warnings or omens, might be that of my implacable death.~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #KEYS
21:Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
22:In death we shall rediscover all the instants of our life and we shall freely combine them as in dreams.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
23:With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
24:I cannot lament the loss of a love or a friendship without meditating that one loses only what one really never had.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
25:I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
26: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, #KEYS
27:I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #KEYS
28:Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS
29:Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Statement to the Argentine Society of Letters (c.1946),#KEYS
30:The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
31:The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Funes the Memorious,#KEYS
32:I kept asking myself how a book could be infinite. I could not imagine any other than a cyclic volume, circular. A volume whose last page would be the same as the first and so have the possibility of continuing indefinitely.~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #KEYS
33:Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety; this controversy enabled him to fulfill his obligations with many books which seemed to reproach him for his neglect.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, The Theologians,#KEYS
34:Ts'ui Pe must have said once: I am withdrawing to write a book. And another time: I am withdrawing to construct a labyrinth. Every one imagined two works; to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing." ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #KEYS
35:If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell. Let me be outraged and annihilated, but for one instant, in one being, let Your enormous Library be justified.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
36:A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words-or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols-spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS
37:This web of time - the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries - embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not.~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #KEYS
38:Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths?,#KEYS
39:The thought came over me that never would one full and absolute moment, containing all the others, justify my life, that all of my instants would be provisional phases, annihilators of the past turned to face the future, and that beyond the episodic, the present, the circumstantial, we were nobody.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS
40:A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. 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, #KEYS
41:Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies - for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry - I say to myself, "What a pity I can't buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS
42:God made Himself totally a man but a man to the point of infamy, a man to the point of reprobation and the abyss. To save us, He could have chosen *any* of the destinies which make up the complex web of history; He could have been Alexander or Pythagoras or Rurik or Jesus; He chose the vilest destiny of all: He was Judas.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
43:Of all man's instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS
44:This has happened and will happen again,' said Euphorbus. 'You are not lighting a pyre, you are lighting a labyrinth of flames. If all the fires I have seen were gathered together here, they would not fit on earth and the angels would be blinded. I have said this many times.' Then he cried out, because the flames had reached him.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
45:In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of the others. In the almost unfathomable Ts'ui Pen, he chooses - simultaneously - all of them. He thus creates various futures, various times which start others that will in their turn branch out and bifurcate in other times. That is the cause of the contradictions in the novel." ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #KEYS
46:Augustine had written that Jesus is the straight path that saves us from the circular labyrinth followed by the impious; these Aurelian, laboriously trivial, compared with Ixion, with the liver of Prometheus, with Sisyphus, with the king of Thebes who saw two suns, with stuttering, with parrots, with mirrors, with echoes, with the mules of a noria and with two-horned syllogisms. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labryinths, The Theologians, #KEYS
47:I pray to the unknown gods that some man-even a single man, tens of centuries ago-has perused and read that book. If the honor and wisdom and joy of such a reading are not to be my own, then let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my own place be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, #KEYS
48:The three of them knew it. She was Kafka's mistress. Kafka had dreamt her. The three of them knew it. He was Kafka's friend. Kafka had dreamt him. The three of them knew it. The woman said to the friend, Tonight I want you to have me. The three of them knew it. The man replied: If we sin, Kafka will stop dreaming us. One of them knew it. There was no longer anyone on earth. Kafka said to himself Now the two of them have gone, I'm left alone. I'll stop dreaming myself. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #KEYS
49:Whoever has seen the universe, whoever has beheld the fiery designs of the universe, cannot think in terms of one man, of that man's trivial fortunes or misfortunes, though he be that very man. That man has been he and now matters no more to him. What is the life of that other to him, the nation of that other to him, if he, now, is no one? This is why I do not pronounce the formula, why, lying here in the darkness, I let the days obliterate me.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
50:Tennyson said that if we could understand a single flower we would know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he meant that there is no deed, however so humble, which does not implicate universal history and the infinite concatenation of causes and effects. Perhaps he meant that the visible world is implicit, in its entirety, in each manifestation, just as, in the same way, will, according to Schopenhauer, is implicit, in its entirety, in each individual.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
51:And yet, and yet... Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical universe, are apparent desperations and secret consolations. Our destiny ... is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and iron-clad. Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
52:The end of this story can only be related in metaphors since it takes place in the kingdom of heaven, where there is no time. Perhaps it would be correct to say that Aurelian spoke with God and that He was so little interested in religious differences that He took him for John of Pannonia. This, however, would imply a confusion in the divine mind. It is more correct to say that in Paradise, Aurelian learned that, for the unfathomable divinity, he and John of Pannonia (the orthodox believer and the heretic, the abhorrer and the abhorred, the accuser and the accused) formed one single person. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, The Theologians, #KEYS
53:From these two incontrovertible premises he deduced that the Library is total and that its shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty-odd orthographical symbols (a number which, though extremely vast, is not infinite): in other words, all that it is given to express, in all languages. Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogue of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, #KEYS
54:At first cautiously, later indifferently, at last desperately, I wandered up the stairs and along the pavement of the inextricable palace. (Afterwards I learned that the width and height of the steps were not constant, a fact which made me understand the singular fatigue they produced). 'This palace is a fabrication of the gods,' I thought at the beginning. I explored the uninhabited interiors and corrected myself: ' The gods who built it have died.' I noted its peculiarities and said: 'The gods who built it were mad.' I said it, I know, with an incomprehensible reprobation which was almost remorse, with more intellectual horror than palpable fear...
...'This City' (I thought) 'is so horrible that its mere existence and perdurance, though in the midst of a secret desert, contaminates the past and the future and in some way even jeopardizes the stars.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings,#KEYS
55:He told me that in 1886 he had invented an original system of numbering and that in a very few days he had gone beyond the twenty-four-thousand mark. He had not written it down, since anything he thought of once would never be lost to him. His first stimulus was, I think, his discomfort at the fact that the famous thirty-three gauchos of Uruguayan history should require two signs and two words, in place of a single word and a single sign. He then applied this absurd principle to the other numbers. In place of seven thousand thirteen he would say (for example) Maximo Pérez; in place of seven thousand fourteen, The Railroad; other numbers were Luis Melian Lafinur, Olimar, sulphur, the reins, the whale, the gas, the caldron, Napoleon, Agustin de Vedia. In place of five hundred, he would say nine. Each word had a particular sign, a kind of mark; the last in the series were very complicated...~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
56:When I began to lose my sight, the last color I saw, or the last color, rather, that stood out, because of course now I know that your coat is not the same color as this table or of the woodwork behind you~the last color to stand out was yellow because it is the most vivid of colors. That's why you have the Yellow Cab Company in the United States. At first they thought of making the cars scarlet. Then somebody found out that at night or when there was a fog that yellow stood out in a more vivid way than scarlet. So you have yellow cabs because anybody can pick them out. Now when I began to lose my eyesight, when the world began to fade away from me, there was a time among my friends… well they made, they poked fun at me because I was always wearing yellow neckties. Then they thought I really liked yellow, although it really was too glaring. I said, 'Yes, to you, but not to me, because it is the only color I can see, practically!' I live in a gray world, rather like the silver-screen world. But yellow stands out. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #KEYS
57:Gradually, the concrete enigma I labored at disturbed me less than the generic enigma of a sentence written by a god. What type of sentence (I asked myself) will an absolute mind construct? I considered that even in the human languages there is no proposition that does not imply the entire universe: to say "the tiger" is to say the tigers that begot it, the deer and turtles devoured by it, the grass on which the deer fed, the earth that was mother to the grass, the heaven that gave birth to the earth. I considered that in the language of a god every word would enunciate that infinite concatenation of facts, and not in an implicit but in an explicit manner, and not progressively but instantaneously. In time, the notion of a divine sentence seemed puerile or blasphemous. A god, I reflected, ought to utter only a single word and in that word absolute fullness. No word uttered by him can be inferior to the universe or less than the sum total of time.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
58:On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph, #KEYS
59:From the twilight of day till the twilight of evening, a leopard, in the last years of the thirteenth century, would see some wooden planks, some vertical iron bars, men and women who changed, a wall and perhaps a stone gutter filled with dry leaves. He did not know, could not know, that he longed for love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing things to pieces and the wind carrying the scent of a deer, but something suffocated and rebelled within him and God spoke to him in a dream: ""You live and will die in this prison so that a man I know of may see you a certain number of times and not forget you and place your figure and symbol in a poem which has its precise place in the scheme of the universe. You suffer captivity, but you will have given a word to the poem.
God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and the animal understood these reasons and accepted his destiny, but, when he awoke, there was in him only an obscure resignation, a valorous ignorance, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a beast. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS
60:The Palace
The Palace is not infinite.
The walls, the ramparts, the gardens, the labyrinths, the staircases, the terraces, the parapets, the doors, the galleries, the circular or rectangular patios, the cloisters, the intersections, the cisterns, the anterooms, the chambers, the alcoves, the libraries, the attics, the dungeons, the sealed cells and the vaults, are not less in quantity than the grains of sand in the Ganges, but their number has a limit. From the roofs, towards sunset, many people can make out the forges, the workshops, the stables, the boatyards and the huts of the slaves.
It is granted to no one to traverse more than an infinitesimal part of the palace. Some know only the cellars. We can take in some faces, some voices, some words, but what we perceive is of the feeblest. Feeble and precious at the same time. The date which the chisel engraves in the tablet, and which is recorded in the parochial registers, is later than our own death; we are already dead when nothing touches us, neither a word nor a yearning nor a memory. I know that I am not dead. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand,#KEYS
61:He had no document but his memory; the training he had acquired with each added hexameter gave him a discipline unsuspected by those who set down and forget temporary, incomplete paragraphs. He was not working for posterity or even for God, whose literary tastes were unknown to him. Meticulously, motionlessly, secretly, he wrought in time his lofty, invisible labyrinth. He worked the third act over twice. He eliminated certain symbols as over-obvious, such as the repeated striking of the clock, the music. Nothing hurried him. He omitted, he condensed, he amplified. In certain instances he came back to the original version. He came to feel affection for the courtyard, the barracks; one of the faces before him modified his conception of Roemerstadt's character. He discovered that the wearying cacophonies that bothered Flaubert so much are mere visual superstitions, weakness and limitation of the written word, not the spoken...He concluded his drama. He had only the problem of a single phrase. He found it. The drop of water slid down his cheek. He opened his mouth in a maddened cry, moved his face, dropped under the quadruple blast.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:All writing is dreaming ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 2:Reality favors symmetry. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 3:Life itself is a quotation. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 4:Everything touches everything. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 5:Writing is only a guided dream. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 6:Each thing implies the universe. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 7:Death is just infinity closing in. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 8:Democracy is an abuse of statistics. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 9:Censorship is the mother of metaphor. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 10:Only in the present do things happen. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 11:The sea is an idiom I cannot decipher. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 12:Canada is so far away it hardly exists. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 13:Man's memory shapes Its own Eden within ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 14:Every man should be capable of all ideas. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 15:The time for your labor has been granted. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 16:Truth never penetrates an unwilling mind. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 17:Doubt is one of the names of intelligence. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 18:Reality is not always probable, or likely. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 19:Time is the substance of which we are made ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 20:A writer's work is the product of laziness. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 21:May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 22:Poets, like the blind, can see in the dark. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 23:Life and death have been lacking in my life. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 24:Writing is nothing more than a guided dream. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 25:All literature, is, finally autobiographical. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 26:Don't talk unless you can improve the silence. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 27:The original is unfaithful to the translation. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 28:Time, which despoils castles, enriches verses. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 29:What a writer wants to do is not what he does. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 30:A poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 31:I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 32:Soccer is popular because stupidity is popular. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 33:The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 34:Besides, rereading, not reading, is what counts. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 35:I have always come to life after coming to books. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 36:In my next life I will try to commit more errors. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 37:The central problem of novel-writing is causality. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 38:Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 39:Time is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 40:From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 41:Creativity is suspended between memory and forgetting. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 42:It only takes two facing mirrors to build a labyrinth. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 43:Reality is partial to symmetry and slight anachronisms ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 44:In general, every country has the language it deserves. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 45:Time is the tiger that devours me, but I am that tiger. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 46:How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives? ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 47:I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 48:The future is as irrevocable as an inflexible yesterday. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 49:To bless thine enemy is a good way to satisfy thy vanity. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 50:A labyrinth of symbols... An invisible labyrinth of time. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 51:What you really value is what you miss, not what you have. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 52:Fame is a form, perhaps the worst form, of incomprehension. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 53:I think most people are more important than their opinions. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 54:To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 55:Your unforgivable sins do not allow you to see my splendor. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 56:You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language? ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 57:Art is endless like a river flowing, passing, yet remaining. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 58:We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 59:I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 60:My advanced age has taught me the resignation of being Borges. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 61:We have stopped believing in progress. What progress that is ! ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 62:While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 63:I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 64:Poetry springs from something deeper; it's beyond intelligence. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 65:For myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 66:The minotaur more than justifies the existence of the labyrinth. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 67:To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 68:A writer should have another lifetime to see if he's appreciated. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 69:Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 70:The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 71:I had always thought of Paradise / In form and image as a library. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 72:There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 73:I secretly assumed, as poets do, The duty on me to define the moon. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 74:Unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 75:Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 76:The art of writing is mysterious, the opinions we hold are ephemeral. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 77:There's no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 78:Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 79:Best thing to happen for a poet. A fine death, no? An impressive death. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 80:He consorted with prostitutes and poets... and with persons even worse. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 81:I gazed at every mirror on the planet, not one gave back my reflection. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 82:The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 83:Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 84:The mightiest love was granted him Love that does not expect to be loved. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 85:My books standing there on the shelf do not know that I have written them. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 86:The heresies we should fear are those which can be confused with orthodoxy. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 87:We have shared out, like thieves, the amazing treasures of days and nights. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 88:I have committed the worst of sins one can commit... I have not been happy. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 89:Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 90:I will pause to consider this eternity from which the subsequent ones derive. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 91:We accept reality so readily - perhaps because we sense that nothing is real. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 92:All theories are legitimate, no matter. What matters is what you do with them. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 93:i walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 94:You may win your heart's desire, but in the end you're cheated of it by death. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 95:I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 96:Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but ... hypotheses may not. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 97:When I wake up, I wake to something worse. It's the astonishment of being myself ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 98:I saw a sunset in Queretaro that seemed to reflect the color of a rose in Bengal. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 99:The future is inevitable and precise, but it may not occur. God lurks in the gaps. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 100:I live in a grey world, rather like the silver screen world. But yellow stands out. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 101:There are those who seek the love of a woman to forget her, to not think about her. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 102:To arrange a library is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 103:Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing, the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 104:What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose? ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 105:When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 106:If I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father's library. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 107:The word happiness exists in every language; it is plausible the thing itself exists. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 108:When you come right down to it, opinions are the most superficial things about anyone ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 109:Im merely a dreamer, and then a writer, and my happiest moments are when I'm a reader. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 110:I think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 111:Translations are a partial and precious documentation of the changes the text suffers. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 112:I never reread what I've written. I'm far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I've done. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 113:Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 114:As the end approaches, there are no longer any images from memory - there are only words. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 115:We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 116:A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 117:Reading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 118:The certainty that everything has already been written annuls us, or renders us phantasmal. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 119:The possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend to be frightful. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 120:I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 121:Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 122:That is what always happens: we never know whether we are victors or whether we are defeated. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 123:The universe is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 124:Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 125:In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 126:Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 127:If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his reader to believe it. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 128:Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on me and treating me badly. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 129:My undertaking is not difficult, essentially. I should only have to be immortal to carry it out. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 130:I ask of any God, of any gods, that if they give immortality, I hope to be granted oblivion also. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 131:We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes, that pile of broken mirrors. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 132:I have no personal system of philosophy. I never attempt to do that. I am merely a man of letters. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 133:Imprecision is tolerable and verisimilar in literature, because we always tend towards it in life. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 134:The future has no other reality than as present hope, and the past is no more than present memory. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 135:It's a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 136:Time broadens the scope of verses and I know of some which, like music, are everything for all men. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 137:The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 138:I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 139:What I'm really concerned about is reaching one person. And that person may be myself for all I know. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 140:As a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 141:The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 142:That one individual should awaken in another memories that belong to still a third is an obvious paradox. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 143:A system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to any one of such aspects. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 144:I don't think there's any essential difference, at least for me, between writing poetry and writing prose. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 145:It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 146:It seemed incredible that this day, a day without warnings or omens, might be that of my implacable death. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 147:Loneliness does not worry me; life is difficult enough, putting up with yourself and with your own habits. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 148:So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 149: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, @wisdomtrove 150:It means much to have loved, to have been happy, to have laid my hand on the living Garden, even for a day. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 151:My father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 152:It seemed incredible to me that day without premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death . ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 153:Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 154:Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 155:A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 156:His life, measured in space and time, will take up a mere few lines, which my ignorance will abbreviate further. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 157:I am not sure of anything, I know nothing . . . can you imagine that I don't even know the date of my own death? ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 158:The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 159:The mathematical sciences wield their particular language made of digits and signs, no less subtle than any other. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 160:God must not engage in theology. The writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 161:The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 162:Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 163:I have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 164:In Spanish it is very difficult to make things flow, because words are over-long. But in English, you have light words. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 165:Mir Bahadur Ali is, as we have seen, incapable of evading the most vulgar of art's temptations: that of being a genius. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 166:Yo, que me figuraba el Para√≠so / Bajo la especie de una biblioteca. I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 167:I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left... ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 168:Captivated by its discipline, humanity forgets and goes on forgetting that it is the discipline of chess players, not of angels. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 169: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, @wisdomtrove 170:Perhaps the apparent favor of the universe is no more than the crocodile grin of a Doberman breathing hard and about to be hungry? ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 171:The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 172:The poverty of yesterday was less squalid than the poverty we purchase with our industry today. Fortunes were smaller then as well. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 173: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, @wisdomtrove 174:When you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 175:One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 176:The dictionary is based on the hypothesis - obviously an unproven one - that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 177:What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite? ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 178:I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 179: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, @wisdomtrove 180: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, @wisdomtrove 181:One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 182:The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 183: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, @wisdomtrove 184: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, @wisdomtrove 185:My father and he had cemented one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 186: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, @wisdomtrove 187:There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 188:In the critics' vocabulary, the work & 189:The visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 190:Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 191:He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 192:In fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 193: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, @wisdomtrove 194:A 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. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 195: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, @wisdomtrove 196:Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 197:Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 198:I'm not interested in the fact that a writer may label himself as being intellectual or anti-intellectual. l'm really interested in the stuff he's turning out. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 199:Time can't be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 200: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, @wisdomtrove 201:This web of time& 202:I am attracted to fantastic writing, and fantastic reading, of course. But I think things that we call fantastic may be real, in the sense of being real symbols. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 203:I 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-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 204: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, @wisdomtrove 205: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, @wisdomtrove 206:In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 207:When I feel I'm going to write something, then I just am quiet and I try to listen. Then something comes through. And I do what I can in order not to tamper with it. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 208: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, @wisdomtrove 209: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, @wisdomtrove 210:I would rather like to think of God as being a kind of adventurer - even as Wells thought about him - or perhaps as something within us making for some unknown purpose. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 211: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, @wisdomtrove 212:When one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a man that observes and narrates it and no longer the man that performed it. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 213: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, @wisdomtrove 214: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, @wisdomtrove 215:I think it's all to the good that a writer shouldn't be too famous. Because, in a country where a writer may be famous, he may be pandering to the mob, celebrity and so on. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 216:I wonder if I have woven through dreams the sexual strife. I don't think so. But after all, my business is to weave dreams. I suppose I may be allowed to choose the material. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 217: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, @wisdomtrove 218:He constructed a vast labyrinthine of periods, made impassable by the piling-up of clauses upon clauses-clauses in which oversight and bad grammar seemed manifestations of disdain. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 219: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, @wisdomtrove 220:Chang Tzu tells us of a persevering man who after three laborious years mastered the art of dragon-slaying. For the rest of his days, he had not a single opportunity to test his skills. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 221:On the floor, and hanging on to the bar, squatted an old man, immobile as an object. His years had reduced and polished him as water does a stone or the generations of men do a sentence. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 222: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, @wisdomtrove 223:Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 224:The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 225:The steps a man takes from the day of his birth until that of his death trace in time an inconcievable figure. The Divine Mind intuitively grasps that form immediately, as men do a triangle. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 226:Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 227:It is clear that there is no classification of the Universe that is not arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what kind of thing the universe is. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 228: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, @wisdomtrove 229: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, @wisdomtrove 230:No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 231: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, @wisdomtrove 232:The European and the North American consider that a book that has been awarded any kind of prize must be good; the Argentine allows for the possibility that the book might not be bad, despite the prize. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 233:The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 234:Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 235:In our dreams (writes Coleridge) images represent the sensations we think they cause; we do not feel horror because we are threatened by a sphinx; we dream of a sphinx in order to explain the horror we feel. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 236:I came to the idea of how fine it would be to think of an encyclopedia of an actual world, and then of an encyclopedia, a very rigorous one of course, of an imaginary world, where everything should be linked. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 237:If you using local color in an unobtrusive way, it is all for the good. But if you stress it, the whole thing is artificial. But it should be used, I mean, it's not forbidden. But you don't have to stress it. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 238: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, @wisdomtrove 239:Lully's machine, Mill's fear and Lasswitz's chaotic library can be the subject of jokes, but they exaggerate a propensity which is common: making metaphysics and the arts into a kind of play with combinations. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 240:I try to avoid purple patches, fine writing, all that kind of thing... because I think they're a mistake. And then sometimes it comes through and sometimes it doesn't, but that's not up to me. It's up to chance. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 241:I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future . . . I felt myself to be, for an unknown period of time, an abstract perceiver of the world. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 242: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, @wisdomtrove 243:Art is very mysterious. I wonder if you can really do any damage to art. I think that when we're writing, something comes through or should come through, in spite of our theories. So theories are not really important. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 244:I believe books will never disappear. It is impossible for it to happen. Of all man's diverse tools, undoubtedly the most astounding are his books... If books were to disappear, history would disappear. So would man. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 245:Israelites, Christians and Muslims profess immortality, but the veneration they render this world proves they believe only in it, since they destine all other worlds, in infinite number, to be its reward or punishment. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 246:I have used the philosophers' ideas for my own private literary purposes, but I don't think that I'm a thinker. I suppose that my thinking has been done for me by Berkeley, by Hume, by Schopenhauer, by Mauthner perhaps. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 247:There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 248:As to my writing short pieces, there are two reasons I can give you. The first is my invincible laziness. The second is that I've always been fond of short stories, and it always took me some trouble to get through a novel. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 249:In the course of a life devoted less to living than to reading, I have verified many times that literary intentions and theories are nothing more than stimuli and that the final work usually ignores or even contradicts them. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 250:Once I am dead, there will be no lack of pious hands to throw me over the railing; my grave will be the fathomless air; my body will sink endlessly and decay and dissolve in the wind generated by the fall, which is infinite. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 251:The exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to construct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the others like a Platonic archetype, an object whose virtues are not diminished by the passage of time. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 252:There is an hour of the afternoon when the plain is on the verge of saying something. It never says, or perhaps it says it infinitely, or perhaps we do not understand it, or we understand it and it is untranslatable as music. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 253: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, @wisdomtrove 254:Then I reflect that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 255:I am almost sure to be blotted out by death, but sometimes I think it is not impossible that I may continue to live in some other manner after my physical death . Or, as Hamlet wonders, what dreams will come when we leave this body? ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 256:My friends tell me that I am an intruder, that I don't really write when I attempt poetry. But those of my friends who write in prose say that I'm no writer when I attempt prose. So really I don't know what to do, I'm in a quandary. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 257:This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 258:The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all of these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man's memory. That is our duty. If we don't fulfill it, we feel unhappy. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 259: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, @wisdomtrove 260:Why do you seem so annoyed at what I'm saying?" "Because we're too much like each other. I loathe your face, which is a caricature of mine, I loathe your voice, which is a mockery of mine, I loathe your pathetic syntax, which is my own. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 261:I would define the baroque as that style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities, and that borders on self-caricature. The baroque is the final stage in all art, when art flaunts and squanders its resources. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 262:Kafka had the sense of guilt. I don't think I have because I don't believe in free will. Because what I have done has been done, well, for me or through me. But I haven't done it really. But I don't believe in free will, I can't feel guilty. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 263: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, @wisdomtrove 264:I know of one semibarbarous zone whose librarians repudiate the "vain and superstitious habit" of trying to find sense in books, equating such a quest with attempting to find meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines on the palms of one's hand. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 265:Many people have thought of me as a thinker, as a philosopher, or even as a mystic. Well the truth is that though I have found reality perplexing enough - in fact, I find it gets more perplexing all the time - I never think of myself as a thinker. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 266: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, @wisdomtrove 267:Whatever 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 unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save it. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 268: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, @wisdomtrove 269:I have tried (I am not sure how successfully) to write plain tales. I dare not say they are simple; there is not a simple page, a simple word, on earth - for all pages, all words, predicate the universe, whose most notorious attribute is its complexity. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 270:I hardly know what I'm going to write - an article, a story, a poem in free verse - or in some regular form. I only know that when I have the first sentence. And when the first sentence makes a kind of pattern, then I find out the kind of rhythm I'm looking for. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 271: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, @wisdomtrove 272:Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 273:The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said. Looking for metaphors, for example: When I was a young man I was always hunting for new metaphors. Then I found out that really good metaphors are always the same. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 274:I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as ‚ÄòThe 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, @wisdomtrove 275: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, @wisdomtrove 276: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, @wisdomtrove 277:You don't have to try to be contemporary. You are already contemporary. What one has in mythology is being evolved all the time. Personally, I think I can do with Greek and Old Norse mythology. For example, I don't think I stand in need of planes or of railways or of cars. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 278:There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe; with the passage of the years it becomes a mere chapter if not a paragraph or a name in the history of philosophy. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 279:I, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man, myself alone. From out of a whirlwind the voice of God replied: I am not, either. I dreamed the world the way you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare: one of the forms of my dream was you, who, like me, are many and one. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 280:A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words‚or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols‚spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 281:I have preferred to teach my students not English literature but my love for certain authors, or, even better, certain pages, or even better than that, certain lines. One falls in love with a line, then with a page, then with an author. Well, why not? It is a beautiful process. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 282:I can't talk about my books. I have written them and tried to forget them. I have written once, and readers have read me many times, no? I try to think of what I wrote, it's very unhealthy to think about the past, the case of elegies is very sad, as much as the case of complaints. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 283:We (the indivisible divinity that works in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and firm in time, but we have allowed slight, and eternal, bits of the irrational to form part of its architecture so as to know that it is false. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 284:Then he reflected that reality does not usually coincide with our anticipation of it; with a logic of his own he inferred that to forsee a circumstantial detail is to prevent its happening. Trusting in this weak magic, he invented, so that they would not happen, the most gruesome details. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 285:The web of time - the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect, or ignore each other through the centuries - embraces "every" possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not, and in yet others both of us exist. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 286:The people of Tl√∂n are taught that the act of counting modifies the amount counted, turning indefinites into definites. The fact that several persons counting the same quantity come to the same result is for the psychologists of Tl√∂n an example of the association of ideas or of memorization. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 287:Although I'm very lazy when it comes to writing, I'm not that lazy when it comes to thinking. I like to develop the plan of a short story, then cut it as short as possible, try to evolve all the necessary details. I know far more about the characters than what actually comes out of the writing. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 288:I suppose every poet has his own private mythology. Maybe he's unaware of it. People tell me that I have evolved a private mythology of tigers, of blades, of labyrinths, and I"m unaware of the fact this is so. My readers are finding it all the time. But I think perhaps that is the duty of poet. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 289:The thought came over me that never would one full and absolute moment, containing all the others, justify my life, that all of my instants would be provisional phases, annihilators of the past turned to face the future, and that beyond the episodic, the present, the circumstantial, we were nobody. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 290:..have always known that my destiny was, above all, a literary destiny ‚ that bad things and some good things would happen to me, but that, in the long run, all of it would be converted into words. Particularly the bad things, since happiness does not need to be transformed: happiness is its own end. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 291:I think of myself as being an ethical man, but I don't try to teach ethics. I have no message. I know little about contemporary life. I don't read a newspaper. I dislike politics and politicians. I belong to no party whatever. My private life is a private life. I try to avoid photography and publicity. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 292:Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 293:The aesthetic event is something as evident, as immediate, as indefinable as love, the taste of fruit, of water. We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it with other words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings? ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 294:Music, feelings of happiness, mythology, faces worn by time, certain twilights and certain places, want to tell us something, or they told us something that we should not have missed, or they are about to tell us something; this imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, the esthetic event. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 295:We did meet forty years ago. At that time we were both influenced by Whitman and I said, jokingly in part, & 296:In the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future." - Essay: "Kafka and his Precursors ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 297:I don't think I can really believe in doomsday; I could hardly believe in rewards and punishments, in heaven or hell. As I wrote down in one of my sonnets - I seem to be always plagiarizing, imitating myself or somebody else for that matter - I think I am quite unworthy of heaven or of hell, and even of immortality. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 298:I foresee that man will resign himself each day to more atrocious undertakings; soon there will be no one but warriors and brigands; I give them this counsel: The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 299:Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 300:A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 301:I am interested in the past. Perhaps one of the reasons is we cannot make, cannot change the past. I mean you can hardly unmake the present. But the past after all is merely to say a memory, a dream. You know my own past seems continually changed when I am remembering it, or reading things that are interesting to me. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 302:A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 303: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, @wisdomtrove 304:If I write a fantastic story, I'm not writing something willful. On the contrary, I am writing something that stands for my feelings, or for my thoughts. So that, in a sense, a fantastic story is as real and perhaps more real than a mere circumstantial story. Because after all, circumstances come and go, and symbols remain. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 305:I confess that I have not cleared a path through all seven hundred pages, I confess to having examined only bits and pieces, and yet I know what it is, with that bold and legitimate certainty with which we assert our knowledge of a city, without ever having been rewarded with the intimacy of all the many streets it includes. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 306:People think that I've committed myself to idealism, to solipsism, or to doctrines of the cabala, because I've used them in my tales. But really I was only trying to see what could be done with them. On the other hand, it might be argued that if I use them it's because I was feeling an affinity to them. Of course, that's true. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 307:I don't think we're capable of knowledge, but I like to keep an open mind. So if you ask me whether I believe in an afterlife or not, whether I believe in God or not, I can only answer you that all things are possible. And if all things are possible, heaven and hell and the angels are also possible. They're not to be ruled out. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 308: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, @wisdomtrove 309:The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse to that of Poe, who reasoned, or feigned to reason, that the writing of a poem is an act of the intelligence. It never fails to amaze me that the classics hold a romantic theory of poetry, and a romantic poet a classical theory. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 310:The two important facts I should say, are emotion, and then words arising from emotion. I don't think you can write in an emotionless way. If you attempt it, the result is artificial. I don't like that kind of writing. I think that if a poem is really great, you should think of it as having written itself despite the author. It should flow. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 311:Two aesthetics exist: the passive aesthetic of mirrors and the active aesthetic of prisms. Guided by the former, art turns into a copy of the environment's objectivity or the individual's psychic history. Guided by the latter, art is redeemed, makes the world into its instrument, and forges, beyond spatial and temporal prisons, a personal vision. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 312:Nowadays, one of the churches of Tl√∂n maintains platonically that such and such a pain, such and such a greenish-yellow colour, such and such a temperature, such and such a sound, etc., make up the only reality there is. All men, in the climactic instant of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat one line of Shakespeare are William Shakespeare. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 313:I write for myself, and perhaps for half a dozen friends. And that should be enough. And that might improve the quality of my writing. But if I were writing for thousands of people, then I would write what might please them. And as I know nothing about them, and maybe I'd have a rather low opinion of them, I don't think that would do any good to my work. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 314:Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that they will receive my every aid and support. I have even secretly longed to write, under a pen name, a merciless tirade against myself. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 315:Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies ‚ for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry ‚ I say to myself, ‚What a pity I can't buy that book, for I already have a copy at home. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 316:A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. 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, @wisdomtrove 317:You will reply that reality hasn't the slightest need to be of interest. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not. In the hypothesis you have postulated, chance intervenes largely. Here lies a dead rabbi; I should prefer a purely rabbinical explanation; not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 318:Of all man's instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 319:Not a single star will be left in the night. The night will not be left. I will die and, with me, the weight of the intolerable universe. I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions, the continents and faces. I shall erase the accumulated past. I shall make dust of history, dust of dust. Now I am looking on the final sunset. I am hearing the last bird. I bequeath nothingness to no one. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 320:Emma dropped the paper. Her first impression was of a weak feeling in her stomach and in her knees; then of blind guilt, of unreality, of coldness, of fear; then she wished that it were already the next day. Immediately afterwards she realized that that wish was futile because the death of her father was the only thing that had happened in the world, and it would go on happening endlessly. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 321:The great American writer Herman Melville says somewhere in The White Whale that a man ought to be & 322:The man who has learned that three plus one are four doesn't have to go through a proof of that assertion with coins, or dice, or chess pieces, or pencils. He knows it, and that's that. He cannot conceive a different sum. There are mathematicians who say that three plus one is a tautology for four, a different way of saying "four" ... If three plus one can be two, or fourteen, then reason is madness. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 323:At the beginning of their careers many writers have a need to overwrite. They choose carefully turned-out phrases; they want to impress their readers with their large vocabularies. By the excesses of their language, these young men and women try to hide their sense of inexperience. With maturity the writer becomes more secure in his ideas. He finds his real tone and develops a simple and effective style. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 324:We have inhabited both the actual and the imaginary realms for a long time. But we don't live in either place the way our parents or ancestors did. Enchantment alters with age, and with the age. We know a dozen Arthurs now, all of them true. The Shire changed irrevocably even in Bilbo's lifetime. Don Quixote went riding out to Argentina and met Jorge Luis Borges there. Plus c'est la même chose, plus ça change. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 325:To think, analyze and invent, he [Pierre Menard] also wrote me, are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence. To glorify the occasional fulfillment of this function, to treasure ancient thoughts of others, to remember with incredulous amazement that the doctor universal is thought, is to confess our languor or barbarism. Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe that in the future he will be. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 326:Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this; I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do - when one has found one's natural voice, one's rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 327: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, @wisdomtrove 328:I think of myself primarily as a reader, then also a writer, but that's more or less irrelevant. I think I'm a good reader, I'm a good reader in many languages, especially in English, since poetry came to me through the English language, initially through my father's love of Swinburn, of Tennyson, and also of Keats, Shelley and so on - not through my native tongue, not through Spanish. It came to me as a kind of spell. I didn't understand it, but I felt it. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 329:On those remote pages [of & 330:Days and nights passed over this despair of flesh, but one morning he awoke, looked (with calm now) at the blurred things that lay about him, and felt, inexplicably, the way one might feel upon recognizing a melody or a voice, that all this had happened to him before and that he had faced it with fear but also with joy and hopefulness and curiosity. Then he descended into his memory, which seemed to him endless, and managed to draw up from that vertigo the lost remembrance that gleamed like a coin in the rain - perhaps because he had never really looked at it except (perhaps) in a dream. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Hlaer to Jangr. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
2:Image is sorcery. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
3:Time is living me. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
4:To think is to forget. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
5:All writing is dreaming ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
6:Reality favors symmetry. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
7:upa tras perfluyue lunó. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
8:Art is fire plus algebra. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
9:A necessary monster. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
10:Life itself is a quotation. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
11:Tudo está dito: falta aposta. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
12:What is past is what is real. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
13:Everything touches everything. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
14:Life itself is a quotation.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
15:Misery requires paradises lost ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
16:Writing is only a guided dream. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
17:Each thing implies the universe. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
18:I secretly assumed, as poets do, ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
19:Today is tomorrow and yesterday. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
20:Death is just infinity closing in. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
21:Paradise will be a kind of library ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
22:Parlare é incorrere in tautologie. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
23:Todo encuentro casual era una cita ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
24:In this world, beauty is so common. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
25:Mi carne puede tener miedo; yo, no. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
26:The mightiest love was granted him ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
27:To speak is to fall into tautology. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
28:Democracy is an abuse of statistics. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
29:Una fiamma d’ultimo sole lo disegna. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
30:Censorship is the mother of metaphor. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
31:I'm alone and nobody is in the mirror ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
32:Kungs, mana atmiņa ir kā notekgrāvis. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
33:Only in the present do things happen. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
34:I'm alone and nobody is in the mirror ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
35:The sea is an idiom I cannot decipher. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
36:Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing, ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
37:Canada is so far away it hardly exists. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
38:Estoy solo y no hay nadie en el espejo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
39:Man's memory shapes Its own Eden within ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
40:La soledad me pesa. La compañía también. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
41:Soy esa torpe intensidad que es un alma. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
42:Every man should be capable of all ideas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
43:La meta es el olvido.Yo he llegado antes. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
44:The time for your labor has been granted. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
45:Truth never penetrates an unwilling mind. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
46:When a writer dies, he becomes his books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
47:cabeza era un jirón más. En el crepúsculo, ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
48:Doubt is one of the names of intelligence. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
49:Man's memory shapes
Its own Eden within ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
50:Reality is not always probable, or likely. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
51:Solitude weighs me down. Company does too. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
52:The indecipherable dust, once Shakespeare. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
53:Time is the substance of which we are made ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
54:A writer's work is the product of laziness. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
55:Know this: in some way you’re already dead. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
56:May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
57:My memory, sir, is like a garbage disposal. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
58:Poets, like the blind, can see in the dark. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
59:Writing is nothing more than a guided dream ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
60:El arte sucede cada vez que leemos un poema. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
61:La amistad une; también el odio sabe juntar. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
62:Life and death have been lacking in my life. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
63:Poets, like the blind, can see in the dark. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
64:Writing is nothing more than a guided dream. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
65:All literature, is, finally autobiographical. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
66:Writing is nothing more than a guided dream. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
67:Don't talk unless you can improve the silence. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
68:The original is unfaithful to the translation. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
69:There is a labyrinth which is a straight line. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
70:Time, which despoils castles, enriches verses. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
71:What a writer wants to do is not what he does. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
72:I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
73:Nadie sabe de qué mañana el mármol es la llave. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
74:Soccer is popular because stupidity is popular. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
75:The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
76:The truth is that we all live by leaving behind ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
77:Besides, rereading, not reading, is what counts. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
78:I do not know which of us has written this page. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
79:I know what the Greeks do not know, incertitude. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
80:Lo que decimos pocas veces se parece a nosotros. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
81:Mi memoria, señor, es como vaciadero de basuras. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
82:I have always come to life after coming to books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
83:In my next life I will try to commit more errors. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
84:La duda es uno de los nombres de la inteligencia. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
85:Mi memoria a veces se parece demasiado al olvido. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
86:No hables a menos que puedas mejorar el silencio. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
87:Toda mi vida modifica el libro que estoy leyendo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
88:Un buon lettore è raro quanto un bravo scrittore. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
89:Algo de sacerdote había en él y también de marino. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
90:.....a miracle has the right to impose conditions. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
91:The central problem of novel-writing is causality. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
92:The river was blue then like extension of the sky. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
93:Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
94:In my soul the afternoon grows wider and I reflect. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
95:I wish I understood my country. I can only love it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
96:Nombres tenían pero podían prescindir de apellidos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
97:Time is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
98:La literatura no es otra cosa que un sueño dirigido. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
99:The image of the Lord has been replaced by a mirror. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
100:A . . . poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
101:el vago rosa trémulo que se ve con los ojos cerrados, ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
102:From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
103:Que el cielo exista, aunque mi lugar sea el infierno. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
104:Retold, my dream is nothing; dreamt, it was terrible. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
105:...un acto es menos que todas las horas de un hombre. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
106:Creativity is suspended between memory and forgetting. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
107:¿Habrá en la tierra algo sagrado o algo que no lo sea? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
108:It only takes two facing mirrors to build a labyrinth. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
109:Reality is partial to symmetry and slight anachronisms ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
110:Such a pity that he [GK Chesterton] became a Catholic. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
111:Tearing money is an impiety, like throwing away bread. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
112:Whatever one man does, it is as though all men did it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
113:"From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me." ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
114:In general, every country has the language it deserves. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
115:Karşılığı başka bir yerde bulunmayan hiçbir şey yoktur. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
116:Time is the tiger that devours me, but I am that tiger. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
117:To refute him is to become contaminated with unreality. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
118:Tú, que me lees, ¿estás seguro de entender mi lenguaje? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
119:How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
120:I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
121:La gloria es una forma de incomprensión; quizás la peor. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
122:Ölümü sabırsızlıkla bekleyerek ama hiç sızlanmadan öldü. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
123:Pensar es olvidar diferencias, es generalizar, abstraer. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
124:The fact is that each writer creates his own precursors. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
125:The future is as irrevocable as an inflexible yesterday. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
126:A labyrinth of symbols... An invisible labyrinth of time. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
127:Ben cenneti hep bir çeşit kütüphane olarak düşlemişimdir. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
128:El problema no es que mientas. El problema es que te creo ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
129:En el sueño del hombre que soñaba, el soñado se despertó. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
130:Happy is he who forgives others and who forgives himself. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
131:In the depths of the siesta amorous doves called huskily; ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
132:To bless thine enemy is a good way to satisfy thy vanity. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
133:"Truth never penetrates an unwilling mind." ~ Jorge Luis Borges 💎 #BOTD 1899, #NFDB
134:What you really value is what you miss, not what you have. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
135:El hombre olvida que es un muerto que conversa con muertos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
136:Fame is a form, perhaps the worst form, of incomprehension. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
137:How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
138:I think most people are more important than their opinions. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
139:La gloria é una forma di incomprensione, forse la peggiore. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
140:Life and death have been lacking in my life.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, On Writing,#NFDB
141:To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
142:Tutti assomigliamo all'immagine che gli altri hanno di noi. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
143:We spend our lives waiting for our book and it never comes. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
144:Your unforgivable sins do not allow you to see my splendor. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
145:You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
146:Art is endless like a river flowing, passing, yet remaining. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
147:Estar contigo o no estar contigo, es la medida de mi tiempo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
148:In the dream of the man that dreamed, the dreamed one awoke. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
149:I, that used to figure Paradise
In the guise of a library ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
150:No hay hombre que, fuera de su especialidad, no sea crédulo; ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
151:We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
152:We spend our lives waiting for our book and it never comes. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
153:After forty, every change becomes a symbol of time's passing. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
154:I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
155:La duda es uno de los nombres de la inteligencia. JORGE LUIS BORGES ~ Walter Riso, #NFDB
156:Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
157:17
La vieja mano
sigue trazando versos
para el olvido ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
158:A la realidad le gustan las simetrías y los leves anacronismos ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
159:La muerte es una vida vivida. La vida es una muerte que viene. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
160:La tierra que habitamos es un error, una incompetente parodia. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
161:My advanced age has taught me the resignation of being Borges. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
162:One is allowed to change the past: the present is so stubborn. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
163:Siempre imaginé que el Paraíso sería algún tipo de biblioteca. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
164:Uno llega a ser grande por lo que lee y no por lo que escribe. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
165:We have stopped believing in progress. What progress that is ! ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
166:While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
167:Alejandría, debelada, imploró en vano la misericordia del César ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
168:Day and night, their frail and crippled ships defy the tempest. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
169:El miedo existe en imaginarse las cosas malas antes que ocurran ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
170:I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
171:I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
172:La derrota tiene una dignidad que la ruidosa victoria no merece ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
173:La ya avanzada edad me ha enseñado la resignación de ser Borges ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
174:Little has happened to me in my lifetime, but I have read much. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
175:Lo que hace un hombre es como si lo hicieran todos los hombres. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
176:Me creo indigno del Infierno o de la Gloria, pero nada predigo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
177:Morir por un a religión es más simple que vivirla con plenitud. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
178:Poetry springs from something deeper; it's beyond intelligence. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
179:Sólo persisten en el tiempo las cosas que no fueron del tiempo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
180:(...) Babilonia no es otra cosa que un infinito juego de azares. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
181:Centuries of centuries and only in the present do things happen. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
182:For myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
183:Hay quien se jacta de lo que ha escrito; yo, de lo que he leído. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
184:The minotaur more than justifies the existence of the labyrinth. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
185:To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
186:"While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one" ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
187:A writer should have another lifetime to see if he's appreciated. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
188:Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
189:No hay cosas que no esté como perdida entre infatigables espejos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
190:Sólo perduran en el tiempo las cosas
Que no fueron del tiempo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
191:The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
192:Uno no es lo que es por lo que escribe, sino por lo que ha leído. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
193:Yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso bajo la especie de una biblioteca. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
194:All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
195:Cilvēku nekas nespēj mainīt. Mūžīgās atsauces uz grāmatu gudrībām. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
196:I had always thought of Paradise / In form and image as a library. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
197:I have always imagined that Paradise will be some kind of library. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
198:... in art nothing is more secondary than the author's intentions. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
199:Por lo demás, la literatura no es otra cosa que un sueño dirigido. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
200:There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
201:To think is to ignore the differences, to generalize, to abstract. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
202:All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
203:Dresser des listes est l'une des plus anciennes activités du poète. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
204:Para escrever bem — acredito com firmeza —, é preciso ser discreto. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
205:Por el amor, que nos deja ver a los otros como los ve la divinidad. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
206:Aquí nos encontramos al fin y lo que antes ocurrió no tiene sentido. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
207:El tiempo está viviéndome. (Jactancia de quietud - Luna de enfrente) ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
208:Il libro è una delle possibilità di felicità che abbiamo noi uomini. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
209:In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
210:Si quieres ser un buen escritor, debes ser mil veces un buen lector. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
211:Unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
212:Uno está enamorado cuando se da cuenta de que otra persona es única. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
213:Desde o crepúsculo do dia até ao dia da noite, toda uma vida inteira. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
214:Grato el amor y grata la plegaria
Dirigida a un Dios que está solo ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
215:Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
216:The art of writing is mysterious, the opinions we hold are ephemeral. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
217:There's no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
218:al cabo de los siglos, todas las cosas recuperarán su estado anterior, ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
219:Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
220:Crees que la Caída es otra cosa que ignorar que estamos en el Paraíso? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
221:...every cultivated man is a theologian, and faith is not a requisite. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
222:He consorted with prostitutes and poets...and with persons even worse. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
223:The present is the instant in which the future crumbles into the past. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
224:There is no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
225:Best thing to happen for a poet. A fine death, no? An impressive death. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
226:I gazed at every mirror on the planet, not one gave back my reflection. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
227:The dawn, the dusk, centuries, arms, and the binding and sundering sea. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
228:Tôi luôn mường tượng rằng Thiên đường cũng từa tựa như một thư viện vậy ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
229:Centuries and centuries of idealism have not failed to influence reality ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
230:Fácilmente aceptamos la realidad, acaso porque intuimos que nada es Real ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
231:Gerçekte, uykudan uyanıp da kendi kendisiyle karşılaşmayan insan yoktur. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
232:No nos une el amor sino el espanto;
Será por eso que la quiero tanto. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
233:some preached asceticism, others licentiousness. All preached confusion. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
234:Sometimes a few birds, a horse, have saved the ruins of an amphitheater. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
235:The art of writing is mysterious, the opinions we hold are ephemeral.... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
236:The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
237:Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
238:has gastado los años y te han gastado, y todavía no has escrito el poema. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
239:I no longer believe in literary schools now; I believe in the individual. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
240:El nombre de una mujer me delata.
Me duele una mujer en todo el cuerpo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
241:My books standing there on the shelf do not know that I have written them. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
242:Pensé: «Me satisface la derrota, porque es un fin y yo estoy muy cansado». ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
243:Uno de los hábitos de la mente es la invención de imaginaciones horribles. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
244:Blind to all fault, destiny can be ruthless at one's slightest distraction. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
245:Centuries of centuries and only in the present do things happen. —JORGE LUIS BORGES ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
246:I have always imagined that Paradise as a kind of library.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights,#NFDB
247:I have committed the worst of sins one can commit... I have not been happy. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
248:Lost in these imaginary illusions I forgot my destiny – that of the hunted. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
249:... se odió; odió su identidad, sus necesidades corporales, su humillación. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
250:The heresies we should fear are those which can be confused with orthodoxy. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
251:We have shared out, like thieves, the amazing treasures of days and nights. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
252:Y no comprendo cómo el tiempo pasa
Yo, que soy tiempo y sangre y agonía. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
253:Yo siempre me habia imaginado el paraiso bajo la especie de una biblioteca. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
254:bir devlet, liderinden daha iyi değildir. ========== Kum Kitabı (Jorge Luis Borges) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
255:God is more generous than men and will measure them by a different standard. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
256:I leave to various future times, but not to all, my garden of forking paths. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
257:La ceguera gradual no es cosa trágica. Es como un lento atardecer de verano. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
258:Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
259:I will pause to consider this eternity from which the subsequent ones derive. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
260:We accept reality so readily - perhaps because we sense that nothing is real. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
261:All theories are legitimate, no matter. What matters is what you do with them. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
262:Hay una dignidad en la derrota que a duras penas le corresponde a la victoria. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
263:i walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
264:medio siglo de violencia le había enseñado que lo más fácil y seguro es matar… ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
265:You may win your heart's desire, but in the end you're cheated of it by death. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
266:i walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
267:Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but ... hypotheses may not. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
268:Tasalanma, yavaş yavaş artan körlük pek trajik değil. Ağır bir yaz akşamı gibi. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
269:Feliz el que no insiste en tener razón, porque nadie la tiene o todos la tienen. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
270:I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
271:Otálora no sabe si atribuir su reserva a hostilidad, a desdén o a mera barbarie. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
272:Tu ausencia me rodea
como la cuerda a la garganta,
el mar al que se hunde. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
273:Unappreciated because too many of his [Rudyard Kipling's] peers were socialists. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
274:When I wake up, I wake to something worse. It’s the astonishment of being myself ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
275:I believe the secret of the success of psychoanalysis resides in people's vanity. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
276:I saw a sunset in Queretaro that seemed to reflect the color of a rose in Bengal. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
277:All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a share past ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
278:Altri si vantino dei libri che hanno scritto, io mi glorio di quelli che ho letto. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
279:Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell.
- The Library of Babel ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
280:Según la doctrina idealista, los verbos vivir y soñar son rigurosamente sinónimos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
281:The future is inevitable and precise, but it may not occur. God lurks in the gaps. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
282:There is no greater comfort than the idea that we have chosen our own misfortunes. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
283:Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures. In one of them I am your enemy. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
284:Bana aynı anda hem 800,000 kitabı hem de karanlığı veren Tanrı'nın muhteşem ironisi ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
285:Casi no soy, pero mis versos ritman
la vida y su esplendor. Yo fui Walt Whitman. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
286:Centuries of centuries and only in the present do things happen. —JORGE LUIS BORGES ~ Elizabeth Kolbert, #NFDB
287:I live in a grey world, rather like the silver screen world. But yellow stands out. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
288:mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of man. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
289:There are those who seek the love of a woman to forget her, to not think about her. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
290:To arrange a library is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
291:Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing, the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
292:The certitude that everything has been written negates us or turns us into phantoms. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
293:There is nothing but quotations left for us. Our language is a system of quotations. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
294:Uneltele mele de lucru sunt umilinţa şi angoasa;
Ce n-aş da să mă fi născut mort! ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
295:What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
296:When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
297:Al primer vislumbre del amanecer el combate murió, como si fuera obsceno o espectral. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
298:Bandeira, sin embargo, siempre es nominalmente el jefe. Da órdenes que no se ejecutan ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
299:If I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father's library. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
300:… it only takes two facing mirrors to construct a labyrinth.
from "Nightmares ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
301:Los espejos y la cópula son abominables, porque multiplican el número de los hombres. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
302:Mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of men... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
303:No hay consuelo mas hábil que el pensamiento de que hemos elegido nuestras desdichas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
304:Patriotism, that least discerning of passions.
- The Shape of the Sword ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
305:There is nothing but quotations left for us. Our language is a system of quotations. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
306:The word happiness exists in every language; it is plausible the thing itself exists. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
307:Todos nosotros llevamos nuestra humilde vida y además llevamos otra vida, imaginaria. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
308:Useless to tell myself that a dream
and the memory of yesterday are the same thing ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
309:When you come right down to it, opinions are the most superficial things about anyone ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
310:A writer always begins by being too complicated—he’s playing at several games at once. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
311:Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, [T1],#NFDB
312:Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe that in the future he will be. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
313:Im merely a dreamer, and then a writer, and my happiest moments are when I'm a reader. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
314:I think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
315:Jorge Luis Borges: “I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” “The ~ Suzanne Kelman, #NFDB
316:Para un hombre célibe entrado en años, el ofrecido amor es un don que ya no se espera. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
317:Translations are a partial and precious documentation of the changes the text suffers. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
318:Hay que tener cuidado al elegir a los enemigos porque uno termina pareciéndose a ellos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
319:I never reread what I've written. I'm far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I've done. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
320:I think—the hero observes that nothing is so frightening as a labyrinth with no center. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
321:Yo no hablo de venganzas ni perdones, el olvido es la única venganza y el único perdón. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
322:Hay quien busca el amor de una mujer para olvidarse de ella, para no pensar más en ella. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
323:Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
324:No mostré a nadie mi tesoro. A la dicha de poseerlo se agregó el temor de que lo robaran ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
325:Toda ficción es una impostura; lo que importa es sentir que ha sido soñada sinceramente. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
326:As the end approaches, there are no longer any images from memory - there are only words. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
327:As we all know, there is a kind of lazy pleasure in useless and out-of-the-way erudition. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
328:[Buenos Aires]
No nos une el amor sino el espanto.
Será por eso que la quiero tanto ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
329:Si vous traduisez Shakespeare, il faut traduire aussi librement que Shakespeare écrivait. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
330:Sometimes I suspect that good readers are even blacker and rarer swans than good writers. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
331:There are people who barely feel poetry, and they are generally dedicated to teaching it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
332:We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
333:When the end draws near, there no longer remain any remembered images; only words remain. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
334:A volte penso che i buoni lettori siano cigni ancor più tenebrosi e rari dei buoni autori. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
335:es menos duro sobrellevar un acontecimiento espantoso que imaginarlo y aguardarlo sin fin, ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
336:Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
337:I've fixed my feelings into durable words
when they could have been spent on tenderness ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
338:Que otros se jacten de las páginas que han escrito; a mí me enorgullecen las que he leído. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
339:Recordé una broma de Schopenhauer y contesté: —A mí también. Podemos salir juntos los dos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
340:Soy un hombre cobarde; no le dejé mi dirección, para eludir la angustia de esperar cartas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
341:That imminence of a revelation that is not yet produced, is perhaps the aesthetic reality. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
342:There is no pleasure more complex than that of thought and we surrendered ourselves to it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
343:A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
344:Felices los amados y los amantes y los que pueden prescindir del amor. Felices los felices. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
345:If you're a writer you're bound to write something fine, at least now and then, off and on. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
346:It's enough that if I am rich in anything, it is in perplexities rather then in certaintes. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
347:Os espelhos e a paternidade são abomináveis porque o multiplicam e o divulgam (o universo). ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
348:Reading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
349:The certainty that everything has already been written annuls us, or renders us phantasmal. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
350:Ya cumplidos los cuarenta años, todo cambio es un símbolo detectable del pasaje del tiempo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
351:Ya cumplidos los cuarenta años, todo cambio es un símbolo detestable del pasaje del tiempo; ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
352:Dilatar la vida de los hombres era dilatar su agonía y multiplicar el numero de sus muertes. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
353:The possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend to be frightful. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
354:I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
355:Nothing is built on stone; All is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
356:Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
357:Si me quieren buscar, búsquenme en los libros. No los lean, por favor, si no obtienen placer. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
358:That is what always happens: we never know whether we are victors or whether we are defeated. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
359:The universe is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
360:Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
361:Como todo poseedor de una biblioteca, Aureliano se sabía culpable de no conocerla hasta el fin ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
362:Hasta la hora del ocaso amarillo
Cuántas veces habré mirado
Al poderoso tigre de Bengala ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
363:In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
364:Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
365:Yo he escrito también algunos cuentos en los cuales traté ambiciosa e inultimente de ser Kafka ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
366:If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his reader to believe it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
367:Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on me and treating me badly. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
368:Cervantes' text and Menard's are verbally identical; but the second is almost infinitely richer. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
369:If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his readers to believe it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
370:In its world, there are no names, nor past, nor future, only the sureness of the present moment. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
371:La lectura debe ser una de las formas de la felicidad y no se puede obligar a nadie a ser feliz. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
372:Marco Polo sabía que lo que imaginan los hombres no es menos real que lo que llaman la realidad. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
373:My undertaking is not difficult, essentially. I should only have to be immortal to carry it out. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
374:I ask of any God, of any gods, that if they give immortality, I hope to be granted oblivion also. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
375:In spite of these three obstacles, Menard's fragmentary Quixote is more subtle than Cervantes'. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
376:Pensó que la felicidad, como el bien, es un atributo divino y que no deben usurparlo los hombres. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
377:Reading . . . is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
378:We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes, that pile of broken mirrors. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
379:I have no personal system of philosophy. I never attempt to do that. I am merely a man of letters. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
380:Imprecision is tolerable and verisimilar in literature, because we always tend towards it in life. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
381:Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on me
and treating me badly. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
382:The future has no other reality than as present hope, and the past is no more than present memory. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
383:There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
384:Uno puede fingir muchas cosas, incluso la inteligencia. Lo que no se puede fingir es la felicidad. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
385:Yo agonicé con él, yo morí con él, yo de algún modo me he perdido con él; por eso, fui implacable. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
386:El tiempo no rehace lo que perdemos, la eternidad lo guarda para la gloria y también para el fuego. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
387:He wanted to dream a man; he wanted to dream him with minute integrity and insert him into reality. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
388:I prayed aloud, less to plead for divine favor than to intimidate the tribe with articulate speech. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
389:It's a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
390:Time broadens the scope of verses and I know of some which, like music, are everything for all men. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
391:A mí se me hace cuento que empezó Buenos Aires:
La juzgo tan eterna como el agua y como el aire. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
392:In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths,#NFDB
393:The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
394:To think, analyze and invent are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
395:Es fama entre los etíopes que los monos deliberadamente no hablan para que no los obliguen a trabajar ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
396:I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
397:La imaginación está hecha de convenciones de la memoria. Si yo no tuviera memoria no podría imaginar. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
398:Life itself is a quotation. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, quoted in Cool Memories (1987) by Jean Baudrillard, (trans. 1990) Ch. 5., #NFDB
399:What I'm really concerned about is reaching one person. And that person may be myself for all I know. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
400:As a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
401:He was the solitary lucid spectator of a multiform, momentaneous, and almost unbearably precise world. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
402:Why a should a dream be any less real than this table. Or Macbeth be less real than today’s newspaper. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
403:Il libro non è un ente chiuso alla comunicazione: è una relazione, è un asse di innumerevoli relazioni. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
404:Pienso que la ficción está comprometida con su tiempo. Nosotros no tenemos por qué preocuparnos de eso. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
405:The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
406:We are our memory,
we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes,
that pile of broken mirrors. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
407:El pasado es la sustancia de que el tiempo está hecho; por ello es que éste se vuelve pasado en seguida. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
408:In death we shall rediscover all the instants of our life and we shall freely combine them as in dreams. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
409:În vremea aceea,căutam înserările,mahalalele şi nefericirea;acum caut dimineţile,centrul şi seninătatea. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
410:Lost in these imaginary illusions I forgot my destiny - that of the hunted.~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #NFDB
411:Todas las teorías son legítimas y ninguna tiene importancia. Lo que importa es lo que se hace con ellas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
412:... que mientras dromimos aqui, estamos despiertos en otro lado y que asi cada hombre es de dos hombres. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
413:Quienes dicen que el arte no debe propagar doctrinas suelen referirse a doctrinas contrarias a las suyas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
414:That one individual should awaken in another memories that belong to still a third is an obvious paradox. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
415:we are like the wizard who weaves a labyrinth and is forced to wander through it till the end of his days ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
416:A system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to any one of such aspects. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
417:I don't think there's any essential difference, at least for me, between writing poetry and writing prose. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
418:I have been Homer; shortly, I shall be No One, like Ulysses; shortly, I shall be all men; I shall be dead. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
419:It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
420:It seemed incredible that this day, a day without warnings or omens, might be that of my implacable death. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
421:Loneliness does not worry me; life is difficult enough, putting up with yourself and with your own habits. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
422:On lit ce qu'on aime, tandis qu'on écrit pas ce qu'on aimerait écrire, mais ce qu'on est capable d'écrire. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
423:So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
424:To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
425: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, #NFDB
426:It means much to have loved, to have been happy, to have laid my hand on the living Garden, even for a day. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
427:las pruebas de la muerte son estadísticas
y nadie hay que no corra el albur
de ser el primer inmortal ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
428:Leer por lo pronto, es una actividad posterior a la de escribir: más resignada, más civil, más intelectual. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
429:Modificar el pasado no es modificar un solo hecho; es anular sus consecuencias, que tienden a ser infinitas ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
430:En mi época no había Best-Sellers y no podíamos prostituírnos. No había quien comprara nuestra prostitución. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
431:Leer, por lo pronto, es una actividad posterior a la de escribir: más resignada, más civil, más intelectual. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
432:Me dijo que su libro se llamaba el Libro de Arena, porque ni el libro ni la arena tienen ni principio ni fin ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
433:My father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
434:Nulla si edifica sulla pietra, tutto sulla sabbia, ma noi dobbiamo edificare come se la sabbia fosse pietra. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
435:Extrañaba muchísimo a sus amigos y sabía sin amargura que éstos no lo extrañaban, dada su invencible reserva. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
436:Todo lenguaje es un alfabeto de símbolos cuyo ejercicio presupone un pasado que los interlocutores comparten. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
437:We must not be too prodigal with our angels; they are the last divinities we harbor, and they might fly away. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
438:Cada lenguaje es una tradición, cada palabra, un símbolo; es baladí lo que un innovador es capaz de alterar... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
439:It seemed incredible to me that day without premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death . ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
440:Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
441:Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
442:Manuel Flores va a morir,/
eso es moneda corriente;/
morir es una costumbre/
que sabe tener la gente. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
443:Para un verdadero poeta, cada momento de la vida, cada hecho, debería ser poético, ya que profundamente lo es. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
444:The Library is a sphere whose exact centre is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
445:Un hombre se confunde, gradualmente, con la forma de su destino; un hombre es, a la larga, sus circunstancias. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
446:Each writer creates his precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
447:I came to abominate my body, I came to sense that two eyes, two hands, two lungs are as monstrous as two faces. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
448:With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
449:Andere mögen sich der Bücher rühmen, die sie geschrieben haben, mein Ruhm sind die Bücher, die ich gelesen habe. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
450:A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
451:His life, measured in space and time, will take up a mere few lines, which my ignorance will abbreviate further. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
452:I am not sure of anything, I know nothing . . . can you imagine that I don't even know the date of my own death? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
453:My name is someone & anyone. I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
454:No one can read two thousand books. In the four hundred years I have lived, I've not read more than half a dozen ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
455:Por muy basto que fuera el entendimiento de un hombre, siempre sería superior al de irracionales.
El inmortal ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
456:Publicamos para não passar a vida a corrigir rascunhos. Quer dizer, a gente publica um livro para livrar-se dele ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
457:Con alivio, con humillación, con terror, comprendió que él también era una apariencia, que otro estaba soñándolo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
458:The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
459:We took out our heavy revolvers (all of a sudden there were revolvers in the dream) and joyfully killed the Gods. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
460:Yalnızlık mükemmel, hatta biraz saldırgandı ve Dahlmann yalnızca güneye değil geçmişe yol aldığını düşünebilirdi. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
461:I tada, kao i danas, svet beše surov; samo su ga srčani mogli proputovati, ali i bednici, koji se na sve priviknu. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
462:The mathematical sciences wield their particular language made of digits and signs, no less subtle than any other. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
463:Un atributo de lo infernal es la irrealidad, un atributo que parece mitigar sus terrores y que los agrava tal vez. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
464:A página de perfeição, a página na qual nenhuma palavra pode ser alterada sem prejuízo, é a mais precária de todas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
465:a ti también, en otras playas de oro,
te aguarda incorruptible tu tesoro:
la vasta y vaga y necesaria muerte. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
466:[...] despertaba ese incompatible rencor que sólo causan la inteligencia, la gracia y la pedantería francesas [...] ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
467:God must not engage in theology. The writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
468:Hay quienes hablan un idioma con muchas eses, que ha de ser español, puesto que quienes lo hablan son despreciados. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
469:If the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictions. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
470:Me pregunto si la identidad personal consiste precisamente en la posesión de ciertos recuerdos que nunca se olvidan ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
471:My undertaking is not difficult, essentially. ... I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths,#NFDB
472:... soy dios, soy héroe, soy filósofo, soy demonio y soy mundo, lo cual es una fatigosa manera de decir que no soy. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
473:The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
474:All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
475:Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
476:I cannot lament the loss of a love or a friendship without meditating that one loses only what one really never had. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
477:Since then my loneliness does not pain me, because I know my redeemer lives and he will finally rise above the dust. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
478:Dormir es distraerse del universo, y la distracción es difícil para quien sabe que lo persiguen con espadas desnudas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
479:I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Dreamtigers (1960) "Poem of the Gifts" ["Poema de los Dones"]., #NFDB
480:Mir Bahadur Alí, lo hemos visto, es incapaz de soslayar la más burda de las tentaciones del arte: la de ser un genio. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
481:No hables al menos que puedas mejorar el silencio. (Don’t speak unless you can improve on the silence.) —Jorge Luis Borges ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB
482:Omul ajunge să se confunde, treptat, cu forma destinului său; cu vremea, el se suprapune circumstanțelor vieții sale. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
483:Every so many years, he went to England to visit—judging by the photographs he showed us—a sundial and some oak trees. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
484:Secili percaktohet pergjithnje ne nje cast te percaktuar te jetes dhe ky eshte casti kur ai gjendet perballe vetvetes. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
485:Voiko se kuolla? Kaikella, mikä kuolee, on ollut jonkinlainen päämäärä, jonkinlainen työ, joka on raastanut sen rikki- ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
486:Words, displaced and mutilated words, words of others, were the poor pittance left him by the hours and the centuries. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
487:Ateşi düşündüm, ama sonsuz bir kitabın yakılmasının da sonsuz olmasından ve yeryüzünü dumanıyla boğabilmesinden ürktüm. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
488:I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
489:If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
490:I have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
491:In Spanish it is very difficult to make things flow, because words are over-long. But in English, you have light words. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
492:Mir Bahadur Ali is, as we have seen, incapable of evading the most vulgar of art's temptations: that of being a genius. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
493: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, #NFDB
494:Timpul nu reface ceea ce pierdem, veşnicia păstrează totul pentru slava ei sau pentru a-l încredinţa focului mistuitor. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
495:Toda esa tristeza del tango es lo que ha llevado a gente a afirmar que el tango es «un pensamiento triste que se baila» ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
496:Cuando era joven, me atraían los atardeceres, los arrabales y la desdicha; ahora, las mañanas del centro y la serenidad. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
497:I am not certain whether I ever believed in the City of the Immortals; I think the task of finding it was enough for me. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
498:There is no intellectual exercise that is not ultimately pointless.
- Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
499:There is no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
500:But if a book is tedious to you, don’t read it; that book was not written for you. Reading should be a form of happiness, ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
501:comprendí que el incesante y vasto universo ya se apartaba de ella y que ese cambio era el primero de una serie infinita. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
502:... la peor de las faltas un una traducción no es traducir mal una palabra, sino traducir mal el tono o la voz del autor. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
503:Mi empresa no es difícil, esencialmente. Me bastaría ser inmortal para llevarla a cabo." Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
504:Yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso / Bajo la especie de una biblioteca. I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
505:......Hudson says that many times in his life he undertook the study of metaphysics, but happiness always interrupted him. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
506:Llegué a abominar de mi cuerpo, llegué a sentir que dos ojos, dos manos, dos pulmones, son tan monstruosos como dos caras. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
507:Omettere sempre una parola, ricorrere a metafore inette e a perifrasi evidenti, é forse il modo piú enfatico di indicarla. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
508:The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
509:Tlön será un laberinto, pero es un laberinto urdido por hombres, un
laberinto destinado a que lo descifren los hombres. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
510:Borelius inquires mockingly: “Why didn’t he renounce his renunciation? Or renounce the idea of renouncing his renunciation? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
511:God moves the player, and he, the piece.
Which god behind God begets the plot
Of dust and time and dream and agonies. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
512:L'esecutore di un'impresa atroce immagini di averla già compiuta, si imponga un futuro che sia irrevocabile come il passato ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
513:Nuestros actos prosiguen su camino,
Que no conoce término.
Maté a mi rey para que Shakespeare
Urdiera su tragedia. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
514:I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
515:I read Borges, Jorge Luis Borges. He think he too good for me, but I love him . . . he was a blind man who see better than anyone ~ Sheridan Hay, #NFDB
516:The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
517:Dios mueve al jugador, y éste, la pieza.
¿Qué dios detrás de Dios la trama empieza
de polvo y tiempo y sueño y agonías? ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
518:Había recibido cinco balazos. Desconocedor feliz de la muerte, un gato de lo más ordinario lo rondaba con cierta perplejidad. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
519:todas las cosas le suceden a uno precisamente, precisamente ahora. Siglos de siglos y sólo en el presente ocurren los hechos; ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
520:Buckley descree de Dios, pero quiere demostrar al Dios no existente que los hombres mortales son capaces de concebir un mundo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
521:De chico, yo solía maravillarme de que las letras de un volumen cerrado no se mezclaran y perdieran en el decurso de la noche. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
522:Like the discovery of love, like the discovery of the sea, the discovery of Dostoevsky marks an important date in one's life. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
523:The metaphysicians of Tlön are not looking for truth, nor even for an approximation of it; they are after a kind of amazement. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
524:Giudicava anche che il fatto estetico non puó prescindere da qualche elemento di stupore, e che stupirsi a memoria é difficile. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
525:la tarea que emprendo es ilimitada y ha de acompañarme hasta el fin, no menos misteriosa que el universo y que yo, el aprendiz. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
526:Nada me dolía tanto como pensar que paralelamente a mi vida Beatriz iría viviendo la suya, minuto por minuto y noche por noche. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
527:They seek neither truth nor likelihood; they seek astonishment. They think metaphysics is a branch of the literature of fantasy ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
528:This frightened man mortified me, as if I were the coward, not Vincent Moon. Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
529:Todo el mundo sabe dónde encontrar la poesía. Y, cuando aparece, uno siente el roce de la poesía, ese especial estremecimiento. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
530:Captivated by its discipline, humanity forgets and goes on forgetting that it is the discipline of chess players, not of angels. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
531:Comprendí que el trabajo del poeta no estaba en la poesía; estaba en la invención de razones para que la poesía fuera admirable; ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
532:El hecho de que toda filosofía sea de antemano un juego dialéctico, una Philosophie des Als Ob, ha contribuido a multiplicarlas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
533: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, #NFDB
534:O executor de uma empresa atroz tem de imaginar que já a cumpriu, tem de se impor um futuro que seja irrevogável como o passado. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
535:Poetry is given to the poet. I don’t think a poet can sit down at will and write. If he does, nothing worthwhile can come of it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
536:A realidade não tem a mínima obrigação de ser interessante ... A realidade pode prescindir dessa obrigação, mas não as hipóteses. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
537:nuestro siglo XX había transformado la fábula de Mahoma y de la montaña; las montañas, ahora, convergían sobre el moderno Mahoma. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
538:Pensar es olvidar diferencias, es generalizar, abstraer. En el abarrotado mundo de Funes no había sino detalles, casi inmediatos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
539:There is a Talmudic legend about three men who go in search of God. One became insane, the other died, and the third met himself. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
540:was wir sind, ist unsere eigene Erinnerung, wir sind jenes trügerische Museum veränderlicher Formen, jener Haufen Spiegelscherben ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
541:Yo creo que el deber de un escritor es ser un escritor, y si puede ser un buen escritor, está, entonces, cumpliendo con su deber. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
542:En vano me repetí que un hombre acosado por un acto de cobardía es más complejo y más interesante que un hombre meramente animoso. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
543:Perhaps the apparent favor of the universe is no more than the crocodile grin of a Doberman breathing hard and about to be hungry? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
544:The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
545:All men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
546:(...) antes de entrar en batalla, nadie sabía quién es. Alguien podía pensarse cobarde y ser un valiente, y asimismo al revés (...) ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
547:Si el honor y la sabiduría y la felicidad no son para mí, que sean para otros. Que el cielo exista, aunque mi lugar sea el infierno ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
548:The poverty of yesterday was less squalid than the poverty we purchase with our industry today. Fortunes were smaller then as well. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
549:El Destino (tal es el nombre que aplicamos a la infinita operación incesante de millares de causas entreveradas) no lo resolvió así. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
550:El ejecutor de una empresa atroz debe imaginar que ya la ha cumplido, debe imponerse un porvenir que sea irrevocable como el pasado. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
551:I...confirm the fact - with a certain bittersweet melancholy - that everything in the world brings me back to a quotation or a book. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
552: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, #NFDB
553:La casa no es tan grande, pensó. La agrandan la penumbra, la simetría, los espejos, los muchos años, mi desconocimiento, la soledad. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
554:La realidad no suele coincidir con las previsiones; con lógica perversa, prever un detalle circunstancial es impedir que este suceda ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
555:Like all the men of Babylon, I have been proconsul; like all, I have been a slave. I have known omnipotence, ignominy, imprisonment. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
556:Înţelese că nici un destin nu-i mai bun decât altul, dar că fiecare om trebuie să dea ascultare celui pe care-l poartă înăuntrul său. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
557:Oscuramente creyó intuir que el pasado es la substancia de que el tiempo está hecho; por ello es que éste se vuelve pasado en seguida ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
558:Oscuramente creyó intuir que el pasado es la sustancia de que el tiempo está hecho; por ello es que éste se vuelve pasado en seguida. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
559:(...) tal vez todos sabemos profundamente que somos inmortales y que tarde o temprano, todo hombre hará todas las cosas y sabrá todo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
560:The fact is that every author creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
561:The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
562:When you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
563:.... cominciò a comprendere. Comprese che un destino non è migliore d'un altro, ma che ogni uomo deve compiere quello che porta in se. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
564:I owe my first inkling of the problem of infinity to a large biscuit tin that was a source of vertiginous mystery during my childhood. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
565:It is venturesome to think that a coordination of words (philosophies are nothing more than that) can resemble the universe very much. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
566:One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
567:se presiente que es amigo de Almotasim un contendor que no rebate los sofismas del otro, "para no tener la razòn de un modo triunfal". ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
568:Todo hombre memorable corre el albur de ser amonedado en anécdotas [‘Every memorable man runs the risk of being minted in anecdotes’] ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
569:What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
570:Además, confesar un hecho es dejar de ser el actor para ser el testigo, para ser alguien que lo mira y lo narra y que ya no lo ejecutó. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
571:I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
572:It seemed incredible that this day, a day without warnings or omens, might be that of my implacable death.~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #NFDB
573:Which one of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
574:Ajedrez misterioso la poesía, cuyo tablero y cuyas piezas cambian como en un sueño y sobre el cual me inclinaré después de haber muerto. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
575: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, #NFDB
576:In the critics' vocabulary, the work 'precursor' is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemics or rivalry. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
577: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, #NFDB
578:Yo diría que barroco es aquel estilo que deliberadamente agota (o quiere agotar) sus posibilidades y que linda con su propia caricatura. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
579:"I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat." ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
580:The story of two dreams is a coincidence, a line drawn by chance, like the shapes of lions or horses that are sometimes formed by clouds. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
581:Un atribut al lucrurilor infernale e irealitatea, un atribut ce pare să micșoreze spaimele pe care le provoacă, dar poate că le sporește. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
582:Words, words, words taken out of place and mutilated, words from other men — those were the alms left him by the hours and the centuries. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
583:Con otra voz dijo que la guerra servía,como la mujer,para q se probaran los hombres,y que,antes de entrar en batalla,nadie sabía quién es. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
584:One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
585:Por el acorde que no hemos oído, por los versos que no nos encontraron (su número es el número de la arena), por el inexplorado universo". ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
586:The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
587:Yo querría que este momento durara siempre -murmuré.
-Siempre es una palabra que no está permitida a los hombres -afirmó Ulrica (…) ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
588:Cuando uno extraña un lugar, lo que realmente extraña es la época que corresponde a ese lugar; no se extrañan los sitios, sino los tiempos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
589:He measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
590: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, #NFDB
591:Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
592:Me negué, con suave energía, a discutir el Aleph; lo abracé, al despedirme, y le repetí que el campo y la serenidad son dos grandes médicos ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
593:Mirrors in metal, and the masked
Mirror of mahogany that in its mist
Of a red twilight hazes
The face that is gazed on as it gazes ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
594:The Word, when it was made flesh, passed from ubiquity to space, from eternity to history, from limitless satisfaction to change and death; ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
595: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, #NFDB
596:Como instrumento de investigación filosófica, la máquina de pensar es absurda. No lo sería, en cambio, como instrumento literario y poético. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
597:Seré todos o nadie. Seré el otro
Que sin saberlo soy, el que ha mirado
Ese otro sueño, mi vigilia. La juzga,
Resignado y sonriente. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
598:Mi deplorable condición de argentino me impedirá incurrir en el ditirambo — género obligatorio en el Uruguay—, cuando el tema es un uruguayo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
599:My father and he had cemented one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
600:My taste runs to hourglasses, maps, seventeenth-century typefaces, etymologies, the taste of coffee, and the prose of Robert Louis Stevenson. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
601:Non c'è nulla di antico sotto il sole.
Tutto accade per la prima volta, ma in un modo eterno.
Chi legge le mie parole sta inventandole. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
602: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, #NFDB
603:There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
604:What will my redeemer be like? I wonder. Will he be a bull or a man? Will he perhaps be a bull with the face of a man? Or will he be like me? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
605:En Roma, conversé con filósofos que sintieron que dilatar la vida de los hombres era dilatar su agonía y multiplicar el número de sus muertes. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
606:My biggest superhero of writing is Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine fabulist. He's an amazingly perceptive writer, but also willing to make a joke. ~ John Hodgman, #NFDB
607:¿De qué otra forma se puede amenazar que no sea de muerte? Lo interesante, lo original, sería que alguien lo amenace a uno con la inmortalidad. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
608:Algunos moralistas razonaron que la posesión de monedas no siempre determina la felicidad y que otras formas de la dicha son quizá más directas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
609:Cualquier destino, por largo y complicado que sea, consta en realidad de un solo momento: el momento en que el hombre sabe para siempre quién es ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
610:I don’t want to continue being Jorge Luis Borges; I want to be someone else. I hope that my death will be total; I hope to die in body and soul. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
611:« Je ne crois pas aux méthodes du réalisme, genre artificiel s'il en est; je préfère révéler d'un seul coup ce que j'ai compris graduellement. » ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
612:Naturalmente, esas «loterías» fracasaron. Su virtud moral era nula. No se dirigían a todas las facultades del hombre: únicamente a su esperanza. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
613:There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others.
I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
614:Aprendió el arte vagabundo de los troperos. Aprendió el otro, más difícil, de mandar hombres; ambos lo ayudaron a ser un buen ladrón de hacienda. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
615:The visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
616:A classic book is a book which generations of men, driven by various reasons, read with that same initial fervor and that same mysterious loyalty. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
617:Mirar el río hecho de tiempo y agua y recordar que el tiempo es otro río, saber que nos perdemos como el río y que los rostros pasan como el agua. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
618:Antes, la teología me interesó, pero de esa fantástica disciplina (y de la fe cristiana) me desvió para siempre Schopenhauer, con razones directas; ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
619:Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
620:He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
621:how strange
it is. For perfect things in poetry do not seem strange;
they seem inevitable. And so we hardly thank the
writer for his pains. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
622:Orice destin, oricât de lung sau de complicat ar fi, se reduce de fapt la un unic moment: momentul în care omul înţelege pentru totdeauna cine este. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
623:Like Whitman, Chesterton thought that the mere fact of existing is so prodigious that no misfortune should exempt us from a kind of cosmic gratitude. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
624:Per il candore e la semplicità della sua vita, c'è chi lo giudica un angelo; è una pietosa esagerazione, poiché non c'è uomo che sia esente da colpa. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
625:This web of time--the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore eachother through the centuries--embrace every posibility. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
626:Una de las escuelas de Tlön llega a negar el tiempo: razona que el presente es indefinido, que el futuro no tiene realidad sino como recuerdo presente ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
627:In fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
628:Maneco Uriarte no mató a Duncan; las armas, no los hombres, pelearon. Habían dormido, lado a lado, en una vitrina, hasta que las manos las despertaron. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
629:Si para todo hay término y hay tasa
y última vez y nunca más y olvido
¿quién nos dirá de quién en esta casa,
sin saberlo, nos hemos despedido? ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
630:So witless did these ideas strike me as being, so sweeping and pompous the way they were expressed, that I associated them immediately with literature. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
631:We can handle all European themes, handle them without superstition, with an irreverence which can have, and already does have, fortunate consequences. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
632:Comprendió que el empeño de modelar la materia incoherente
y vertiginosa de que se componen los sueños es el más arduo que
puede acometer un varón ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
633:Like every writer, he measured other men's virtues by what they had accomplished, yet asked that other men measure him by what he planned someday to do. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
634: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, #NFDB
635:In death we shall rediscover all the instants of our life and we shall freely combine them as in dreams.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
636:Wątpliwe, aby świat miał sens; jeszcze bardziej wątpliwe, aby miał sens podwójny lub potrójny, zauważy niedowiarek. Ja sądzę, że tak właśnie jest; (...). ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
637:A mí no me gusta que la gente me haga confidencias, porque mientras me dicen cosas importantísimas pienso en otra cosa y tengo miedo de que se den cuenta. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
638:But let no one imagine that we were mere ascetics. There is no more complex pleasure than thought, and it was to thought that we delivered ourselves over. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
639:Dios ha creado las noches que se arman
de sueños y las formas del espejo
para que el hombre sienta que es reflejo
y vanidad. Por eso nos alarman. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
640:I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
641:Perhaps he meant that there is no fact, however insignificant, that does not involve universal history and the infinite concatenation of cause and effect. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
642:A 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. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
643: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, #NFDB
644:Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
645:...like every writer, he measured other men's virtues by what they had accomplished, yet asked that other men measure him by what he planned someday to do. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
646:Russel /.../ antar att planeten har blivit skapad för några minuter sedan, >utrustad< med en mänsklighet som >minns< ett illusoriskt förflutet. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
647:Ser inmortal es baladí; menos el hombre, todas las criaturas lo son, pues ignoran la muerte; lo divino, lo terrible, lo incomprensible, es saberse inmortal. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
648:El más pródigo amor le fue otorgado
El amor que no espera ser amado
(Hem viel de rijkelijkste liefde toe,
De liefde die geen wederliefde hoeft.) ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
649:it is also said that it takes the shape of a man pointing to both heaven and earth, in order to show that the lower world is the map and mirror of the higher ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
650:Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
651:Creo que mis jornadas y mis noches se igualan en pobreza y en riqueza a las de Dios y a las de todos los hombres." ('Mi vida entera', Luna de en frente - 1925) ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
652:I'm not interested in the fact that a writer may label himself as being intellectual or anti-intellectual. l'm really interested in the stuff he's turning out. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
653:Time can't be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
654: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, #NFDB
655:De toutes les villes du monde. de toutes les patries intimes qu'un homme cherche à mériter au cours de ses voyages, Genève me semble la plus propice au bonheur. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
656:With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
657:Creo que la primera lectura es la verdadera, y que en las siguientes nos engañamos a nosotros mismos con la creencia de que se repite la sensación, la impresión. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
658:I am attracted to fantastic writing, and fantastic reading, of course. But I think things that we call fantastic may be real, in the sense of being real symbols. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
659:Lo que más admiro en los demás es la ironía, la capacidad de verse de lejos y no tomarse en serio. Después, el valor y la humildad, siempre que no sea ostentosa. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
660:Lo sucesivo del lenguaje indebidamente exagera los hechos que indicamos, ya que cada palabra abarca un lugar en la página y un instante en la mente del lector... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
661:Russell (The Analysis of Mind, 1921, p. 159) suppone che il pianeta sia stato creato pochi minuti fa, provvisto di un'umanità che «ricorda» un passato illusorio. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
662:The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already
accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
663:When I began writing I always said to myself that my ideas were very shallow--
that if a reader saw through them, he would despise me. So I disguised myself. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
664:Desvario laborioso e empobrecedor é o de compor vastos livros; o de espraiar por quinhentas páginas uma ideia cuja perfeita exposição oral cabe em poucos minutos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
665:Giuda cercò l'Inferno, perché la felicità del Signore gli bastava. Pensò che la felicità, come il bene, è un attributo divino, cui non devono usurpare gli uomini. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
666:I 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 Luis Borges, #NFDB
667:Lo que más admiro en los demás es la ironía, la capacidad de verse de lejos y no tomarse en serio. Después, el valor y la humildad, siempre que no sea ostentosa". ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
668: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, #NFDB
669:Then Bioy Casares recalled that one of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had stated that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of man. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
670:When people write in favor or against anybody, that hardly helps or hurts them...man can be done or undone by his own writing, not by what other people say of him. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
671: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, #NFDB
672:Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch
this declaration of the mastery
of God who, with magnificent irony,
granted me both the gift of books and the night. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
673:Methodical writing distracts me from the present condition of men. But the certainty that everything has been already written nullifies or makes phantoms of us all. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
674:The years go by, and I've told the story so many times that I'm not sure anymore whether I actually remember it or whether I just remember the words I tell it with. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
675:Glencairn, tal vez omnipotente en
la ciudad que una firma al pie de un decreto le destinó, era una mera cifra en los engranajes de la administración del Imperio. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
676:I cannot lament the loss of a love or a friendship without meditating that one loses only what one really never had.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
677:In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
678:I suspected once that any human life, however intricate and full it might be, consisted in reality of one moment: the moment when a man knows for all time who he is. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
679:Luego reflexionó que la realidad no suele coincidir con las previsiones, con lógica perversa infirió que prever un detalle circunstancial es impedir que éste suceda. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
680:Luego reflexionó que la realidad no suele coincidir con las previsiones; con lógica perversa infirió que prever un detalle circunstancial es impedir que éste suceda. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
681:When I feel I'm going to write something, then I just am quiet and I try to listen. Then something comes through. And I do what I can in order not to tamper with it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
682:Essere immortale è cosa da poco: tranne l'uomo, tutte le creature lo sono, giacché ignorano la morte; la cosa divina, terribile, incomprensibile, è sapersi immortali. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
683: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, #NFDB
684:En Alejandría se ha dicho que sólo es incapaz de una culpa quien ya la cometió y ya se arrepintió; para estar libre de un error, agreguemos, conviene haberlo profesado ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
685:Pokušao bih uvijek imati lijepe trenutke, Jer se jedino od toga sastoji život, od trenutaka. Kada bih se mogao vratiti unatrag, borio bih se da nikada ne izgubim "sada ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
686:Su modestia y su anhelo de agradar eran tan duraderos que muchas noches comenzó por defensa y acabó por confesión, siempre al servicio de las inclinaciones del pueblo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
687:Azevedo Bandeira is an expert in the art of progressive intimidation, in the satanic maneuver of gradually humiliating his interlocutor by combining verities and gibes. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
688:El temor de lo crasamente infinito, del mero espacio, de la mera materia, tocó por un instante a Averroes. Miró el simétrico jardín; se supo envejecido, inútil, irreal. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
689:I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
690: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, #NFDB
691:I would rather like to think of God as being a kind of adventurer - even as Wells thought about him - or perhaps as something within us making for some unknown purpose. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
692:I imagined a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.” –Jorge Luis Borges ~ Peter Morville, #NFDB
693:Music reveals a personal past of which, until then, each of us was unaware, moving us to lament misfortunes we never suffered and wrongs we did not commit. —Jorge Luis Borges ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
694:El contacto y el hábito de Tlön han desintegrado este mundo. Encantada por su rigor, la humanidad olvida y torna a olvidar que es un rigor de ajedrecistas, no de ángeles. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
695:Aku membayangkan bahwa surga itu merupakan sebuah perkampungan sederhana yang di tengahnya terdapat perpustakaan besar dan berisi buku-buku dari berbagai zaman dan bangsa. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
696:Años de soledad le habían enseñado que los días, en la memoria, tienden a ser iguales, pero que no hay un día, ni siquiera de cárcel o de hospital, que no traiga sorpresas ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
697:Cu un glas schimbat, mi-a spus că războiul, ca și femeia, au fost făcute ca să-i pună pe bărbați la încercare și că, înainte de a intra în luptă, nimeni nu știe cine este. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
698:En la ventana estaban los tejados de siempre y el sol nublado de las seis. Me pareció increíble que ese día sin premoniciones ni símbolos fuera el de mi muerte implacable. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
699: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, #NFDB
700:It must be that I am not made to be a dead man, but these places and this discussion seem like a dream, and not a dream dreamed by me but by someone else still to be born. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
701:The house is not this large, he thought. Other things are making it seem larger: the dim light, the symmetry, the mirrors, so many years, my unfamiliarity, the loneliness. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
702:What bitter slavishness, that of my face, that of one of my former faces. This odious fate reserved for my features must perforce make me odious too, but I no longer care. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
703:When one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a man that observes and narrates it and no longer the man that performed it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
704: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, #NFDB
705:Años de soledad le habían enseñado que los días, en la memoria, tienden a ser iguales, pero que no hay un día, ni siquiera de cárcel o de hospital, que no traiga sorpresas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
706:Dessa correta aplicação da lei da causalidade segue-se que o menor dos fatos pressupõe o inconcebível universo e, inversamente, que o universo necessita do menor dos fatos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
707:distance. I 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 Luis Borges, #NFDB
708: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, #NFDB
709:I think it's all to the good that a writer shouldn't be too famous. Because, in a country where a writer may be famous, he may be pandering to the mob, celebrity and so on. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
710:Jam në Buenos Aires. Shpresoj t'ju shoh sonte, shpresoj t'ju shoh nesër. E di që ne do t'jemi të lumtur bashkë (të lumtur dhe ndonjëherë memecë dhe madhështisht budallenj). ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
711:Son el irresponsable juego de un tímido que se animó a escribir cuentos y que se distrajo en falsear y tergiversar (sin justificación estética alguna vez) ajenas historias. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
712: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, #NFDB
713:La cosa certa è che viviamo rimandando tutto ciò che può essere rimandato; forse tutti sappiamo che siamo immortali e che prima o poi, ogni uomo farà ogni cosa e saprà tutto ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
714:Reading … is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. ~ Jorge Luis Borges Universal History of Infamy [Historia universal de la infamia] (1935), Preface., #NFDB
715:The morning sun shone over the bronze blade. There were no more traces of blood left. "Would you believe it Ariadne?" said Theseus "The Minotaur almost didn't defend itself. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
716:Hay quienes no pueden imaginar un mundo sin pájaros; hay quienes no pueden imaginar un mundo sin agua; en lo que a mi se refiere, soy incapaz de imaginar un mundo sin libros. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
717:I wonder if I have woven through dreams the sexual strife. I don't think so. But after all, my business is to weave dreams. I suppose I may be allowed to choose the material. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
718:non si può misurare il tempo in giorni come si misura il denaro in centesimi o in pesos, perché i pesos sono tutti uguali mentre ogni giorno è diverso e forse anche ogni ora. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
719:The system was elementary, as you can see. Naturally these "lotteries" failed. Their moral virtue was nil. They were not directed at all of man's faculties, but only at hope. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
720: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, #NFDB
721:The truth is that we all live by leaving behind; no doubt we all profoundly know that we are immortal and that sooner or later every man will do all things and know everything. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
722:Yo, Quijano, seré paladín. Seré mi sueño. En esa vieja casa hay una adarga antigua y una hoja de Toledo y una lanza y los libros verdaderos que a mi brazo prometen la victoria. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
723:Entre las cosas hay una
De la que no se arrepiente
Nadie en la tierra. Esa cosa
Es haber sido valiente.
Siempre el coraje es mejor,
La esperanza nunca es vana ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
724:Faptele grave se petrec în afara timpului, fie din pricină că trecutul imediat parcă se rupe de viitor, fie din pricină că părțile alcătuitoare nu par să se înlănțuiască firesc. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
725:I’m sorry to say that people have written fifty or sixty books about me. I haven’t read a single one of them, since I know too much of the subject, and I’m sick and tired of it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
726:Bazen ölsem diyorum.
sahilde güneşlenmeye uzanır gibi,
uzanıp sıcak kumlara,
kum olsam.
Unutsa sevdiklerim,
hiç yaşamamışım gibi.
Ben de unutsam,
kaybolsam. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
727:Edimburgo o York o Santiago de Compostela pueden mentir eternidad; no así Buenos Aires, que hemos visto brotar de un modo esporádico, entre los huecos y los callejones de tierra. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
728:He had studied with fervor and with vanity nearly every page of Lord knows what Communist manual; he made use of dialectical materialism to put an end to any discussion whatever. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
729:Reality may be too complex for oral transmission; legend recreates it in a manner which is only accidentally false and which allows it to go about the world, from mouth to mouth. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
730:God has created nights well-populated
with dreams, crowded with mirror images,
so that man may feel that he is nothing more
than vain reflection. That's what frightens us. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
731:He constructed a vast labyrinthine of periods, made impassable by the piling-up of clauses upon clauses-clauses in which oversight and bad grammar seemed manifestations of disdain. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
732:I offer her that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow - the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
733:The exchange of thoughts is a condition necessary for all love, all friendship and all real dialogue. Two men who can speak together can enrich and broaden themselves indefinitely. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
734:Noches hubo en que me creí tan seguro de poder olvidarla que voluntariamente la recordaba. Lo cierto es que abusé de esos ratos; darles principio resultaba más fácil que darles fin. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
735:Quain solía argumentar que los lectores eran una especie ya extinta. 'No hay europeo' (razonaba) 'que no sea un escritor, en potencia o en acto.'" Examen de la obra de Herbert Quain ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
736:There are those who cannot imagine a world without birds;
there are those who cannot imagine a world without water;
but in my case I am unable to imagine a world without books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
737: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, #NFDB
738:Hay una hora de la tarde en que la llanura está por decir algo; nunca lo dice o tal vez lo dice infinitamente y no lo entendemos, o lo entendemos pero es intraducible como una música… ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
739:Hay una hora de la tarde en que la llanura está por decir algo; nunca lo dice o tal vez lo dice infinitamente y no lo entendemos, o lo entendemos pero es intraducible, como una música ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
740:I reflected that there is nothing less material than money, since any coin whatsoever (let us say a coin worth twenty centavos) is, strictly speaking, a repertory of possible futures. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
741:I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #NFDB
742: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 mortal. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
743: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, #NFDB
744:Czym są w końcu słowa? Słowa to symbole naszych wspólnych wspomnień. Kiedy używam danego słowa, spodziewam się, że czytelnicy posiadają pewne doświadczenia, związane z jego znaczeniem. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
745:[Jorge Luis Borges] had short stories, and I was trying to learn how to write short stories, and then he had these things in the middle that were like fables, and I loved hearing fables. ~ Sandra Cisneros, #NFDB
746:Siamo fatti per l’arte, siamo fatti per la memoria, per la poesia o forse per l’oblio. Ma qualcosa resta e questo qualcosa è la storia o la poesia, che non sono essenzialmente diverse. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
747:Chang Tzu tells us of a persevering man who after three laborious years mastered the art of dragon-slaying. For the rest of his days, he had not a single opportunity to test his skills. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
748:I thought that a man might be an enemy of other men, of the differing moments of other men, but never an enemy of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams, or the West wind. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
749:Lo cierto es que vivimos postergando todo lo postergable; tal vez todos sabemos profundamente que somos inmortales y que tarde o temprano, todo hombre hará todas las cosas y sabrá todo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
750:(...) pero en mi niñez he visto hombres viejos que largamente se ocultaban en las letrinas, con unos discos de metal en un cubilete prohibido, y débilmente remedaban el divino desorden. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
751:So my life is a point-counterpoint, a kind of fugue, and a falling away–and everything winds up being lost to me, and everything falls into oblivion, or into the hands of the other man. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
752:This delay (whose importance the reader will appreciate later) was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
753:La frase quería ser ingeniosa y adiviné que no era la primera vez que la pronunciaba. Supe después que no era característica de ella, pero lo que decimos no siempre se parece a nosotros. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
754:My friend you must understand that time forks perpetually into countless futures. And in at least one of them I have become your enemy. Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) ~ Adrian McKinty, #NFDB
755:On the floor, and hanging on to the bar, squatted an old man, immobile as an object. His years had reduced and polished him as water does a stone or the generations of men do a sentence. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
756:Há uma hora da tarde em que a planície está a ponto de dizer alguma coisa; nunca o diz ou talvez o diga infinitamente e não entendemos, ou entendemos mas é intraduzível como uma música... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
757: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, #NFDB
758:He [Omar Khayyam] is an atheist, but knows how to interpret in orthodox style the most difficult passages of the Koran; for every educated man is a theologian and faith is not a requisite. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
759:Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
760:The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
761:Ser pobre implica una más inmediata posesión de la realidad, un atropellar el primer gusto áspero de las cosas: conocimiento que parece faltar a los ricos, como si todo les llegara filtrado. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
762:The steps a man takes from the day of his birth until that of his death trace in time an inconcievable figure. The Divine Mind intuitively grasps that form immediately, as men do a triangle. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
763:Tanrısal bir çiçeğin ya da düşüncedeki bir çiçeğin, geleceğin çiçeği olması, güncel zamanda atomları henüz birleşmemiş ve farklı yerlerde bulunan çelişkili bir çiçek olması daha da inanılmaz. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
764:Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
765:All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past. How, then, can I translate into words the limitless Aleph, which my floundering mind can scarcely encompass? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
766:It is clear that there is no classification of the Universe that is not arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what kind of thing the universe is. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
767:Liberado de la necesidad de la mentira,
Sabe que hoy va a la muerte, no al olvido,
Y que es un rey. La ejecución lo espera;
La mañana es atroz y verdadera.
No hay temor en su carne. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
768: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, #NFDB
769: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, #NFDB
770:De los diversos instrumentos inventados por el hombre, el más asombroso es el libro; todos los demás son extensiones de su cuerpo… Sólo el libro es una extensión de la imaginación y la memoria”. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
771:Espero ser juzgado por lo que he escrito, no por lo que he dicho o me han hecho decir. Yo soy sincero en este momento, pero quizás dentro de media hora ya no esté de acuerdo con lo que he dicho. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
772:...vi tu cara, y sentí vértigo y lloré, porque mis ojos habían visto ese objeto secreto y conjetural, cuyo nombre usurpan los hombres, pero que ningún hombre ha mirado: el inconcebible universo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
773:Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
774:Să modifici trecutul nu înseamnă să modifici un singur fapt, ci să-i anulezi consecințele, care tind să fie infinite. Cu alte cuvinte, am putea spune că înseamnă să creezi două istorii universale. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
775:No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
776:I felt what we always feel when someone dies–the sad awareness, now futile, of how little it would have cost us to have been more loving. One forgets that one is a dead man conversing with dead men. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
777:Nadie es alguien, un solo hombre inmortal es todos los hombres. Como Cornelio Agrippa, soy dios, soy héroe, soy filósofo, soy demonio y soy mundo, lo cual es una fatigosa manera de decir que no soy. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
778:Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
779:... Vi alguna lágrima. El hombre alzaba o alejaba la voz y los acordes casi iguales eran monótonos o, mejor aún, infinitos. Yo hubiera querido que el canto siguiera para siempre y fuera mi vida. ... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
780:Let heaven exist, though my own place be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
781:Others died, but it happened in the past,
The season (as all men know) most favorable for death.
Is it possible that I, subject of Yaqub Almansur,
Must die as roses had to die and Aristotle? ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
782:Filosóficamente, la memoria no es menos prodigiosa que la adivinación del futuro; el día de mañana está más cerca de nosotros que la travesía del Mar Rojo por los hebreos, que, sin embargo, recordamos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
783: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, #NFDB
784:zaman beni sürükleyen bir nehir, ama nehir benim;
beni parçalayan bir kaplan, ama kaplan benim;
beni tüketen bir ateş, ama ateş benim;
evren, ne yazık ki gerçek;
ben, ne yazık ki, borges'im ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
785:Ogni linguaggio è un alfabeto di simboli il cui uso presuppone un passato che gli interlocutori condividono; come trasmettere agli altri l'infinito Aleph, che la mia timorosa memoria a stento abbraccia? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
786:The European and the North American consider that a book that has been awarded any kind of prize must be good; the Argentine allows for the possibility that the book might not be bad, despite the prize. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
787:The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
788:La Historia (que, a semejanza de cierto director cinematográfico, procede por imágenes discontinuas) propone ahora la de una arriesgada taberna, que está en el todopoderoso desierto igual que en alta mar. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
789:Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
790:All our lives we postpone everything that can be postponed; perhaps we all have the certainty, deep inside, that we are immortal and sooner or later every man will do everything, know all there is to know. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
791:Dicen que soy un gran escritor. Agradezco esa curiosa opinión, pero no la comparto. El día de mañana, algunos lúcidos la refutarán fácilmente y me tildarán de impostor o chapucero o de ambas cosas a la vez. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
792:Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Statement to the Argentine Society of Letters (c.1946),#NFDB
793:Lógicamente, hubiera podido (y debido) morirse de hambre, pero su confusa jovialidad, su permanente sonrisa y su mansedumbre infinita le conciliaron el favor de cierta familia de Castro, cuyo nombre adoptó. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
794:Tres suertes puede correr un libro de versos: puede ser adjudicado al olvido, puedo no dejar una sola línea pero sí una imagen total del hombre que lo hizo, puede legar a las antologías unos pocos poemas... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
795:Ah,' said the journalist, 'so the entire thing is your own invention. I thought it was true because you gave the name of the street.' I did not dare tell him that the naming of streets is not much of a feat. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
796:A writer lives. The task of being a poet is not completed at a fixed schedule. 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, #NFDB
797:In our dreams (writes Coleridge) images represent the sensations we think they cause; we do not feel horror because we are threatened by a sphinx; we dream of a sphinx in order to explain the horror we feel. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
798:The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
799:Cambiará el universo pero yo no, pensé con melancólica vanidad; alguna vez, lo sé, mi vana devoción la había exasperado; muerta, yo podía consagrarme a su memoria, sin esperanza, pero también sin humillación. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
800:I came to the idea of how fine it would be to think of an encyclopedia of an actual world, and then of an encyclopedia, a very rigorous one of course, of an imaginary world, where everything should be linked. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
801:I carried out my plan because I felt The Chief had some fear of those of my race, of those uncountable forebears whose culmination lies in me. I wished to prove to him that a yellow man could save his armies. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
802:If you using local color in an unobtrusive way, it is all for the good. But if you stress it, the whole thing is artificial. But it should be used, I mean, it's not forbidden. But you don't have to stress it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
803: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, #NFDB
804:Lully's machine, Mill's fear and Lasswitz's chaotic library can be the subject of jokes, but they exaggerate a propensity which is common: making metaphysics and the arts into a kind of play with combinations. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
805:Comprendí que el trabajo del poeta no estaba en la poesía; estaba en la invención de razones para que la poesía fuera admirable; naturalmente, ese ulterior trabajo modificaba la obra para él, pero no para otro. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
806:Comprendí que el trabajo del poeta no estaba en la poesía; estaba en la invención de razones para que la poesía fuera admirable; naturalmente, ese ulterior trabajo modificaba la obra para él, pero no para otros. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
807:If I could live again - I will travel light,
If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feet
at the beginning of spring till
the end of autumn,
I'll ride more carts,
I'll watch more sunrises... ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
808:I remember him with a dark passionflower in his hand, looking at it as no one has ever looked at such a flower, though they might look from the twilight of day until the twilight of night, for a whole life long. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
809:I try to avoid purple patches, fine writing, all that kind of thing... because I think they're a mistake. And then sometimes it comes through and sometimes it doesn't, but that's not up to me. It's up to chance. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
810:También es vívido el contraste de los estilos. El estilo arcaizante de Menard —extranjero al fin— adolece de alguna afectación. No así el del precursor, que maneja con desenfado el español corriente de su época. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
811:(I know of an uncouth region whose librarians repudiate the vain and superstitious custom of finding a meaning in books and equate it with that of finding a meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of one’s palm ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
812:One of the schools in Tlön has reached the point of denying time. It reasons that the present is undefined, that the future has no other reality than as present hope, that the past is no more than present memory. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
813:I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future . . . I felt myself to be, for an unknown period of time, an abstract perceiver of the world. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
814: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, #NFDB
815:There is a saying that only the man who has already committed a crime and repented of it is incapable of that crime; to be free of an erroneous opinion, I myself might add, one must at some time have professed it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
816:The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: "Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
817:Una de las escuelas de Tlön llega a negar el tiempo: razona que el presente es indefinido, que el futuro no tiene realidad sino como esperanza presente, que el pasado no tiene realidad sino como recuerdo presente. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
818:Existe un río cuyas aguas dan la inmortalidad; en alguna región habrá otro río cuyas aguas la borren. El número no es infinito; un viajero inmortal que recorra el mundo acabará, algún día, por haber bebido de todos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
819:Que un individuo quiera despertar en otro individuo recuerdos que no pertenecieron más que a un tercero es una paradoja evidente. Ejecutar con despreocupación esa paradoja, es la inocente voluntad de toda biografía. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
820:I am returning to the language my ancestors spoke fifty generations ago; I am returning to that language; I am reclaiming it. It is not the first time I speak it; when I had other names this was the language I spoke. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
821:I believe books will never disappear. It is impossible for it to happen. Of all man's diverse tools, undoubtedly the most astounding are his books... If books were to disappear, history would disappear. So would man. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
822:The ascetic, for the greater glory of God, degrades and mortifies the flesh; Judas did the same with the spirit. He renounced honor, good, peace, the Kingdom of Heaven, as others, less heroically, renounced pleasure. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
823:Art is very mysterious. I wonder if you can really do any damage to art. I think that when we're writing, something comes through or should come through, in spite of our theories. So theories are not really important. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
824: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,#NFDB
825:No chão, encostado ao balcão, acocorava-se, imóvel como uma coisa,
um homem muito velho.
Os muitos anos haviam-no reduzido e polido como fazem as águas a uma pedra
ou as gerações dos homens a um provérbio ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
826:And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; and now that I have unlimited power, I am going to cause a tiger. - Dreamtigers ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
827:Israelites, Christians and Muslims profess immortality, but the veneration they render this world proves they believe only in it, since they destine all other worlds, in infinite number, to be its reward or punishment. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
828:Akheronin sisuksissa on kyyneliä, hammasten kiristystä, utua, tulta, sietämätöntä poltetta, jäätävää kylmyyttä, koiria, karhuja, leijonia ja käärmeitä. Tässä legendassa helvetti on eläin, jonka sisällä on muita eläimiä. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
829:I have used the philosophers' ideas for my own private literary purposes, but I don't think that I'm a thinker. I suppose that my thinking has been done for me by Berkeley, by Hume, by Schopenhauer, by Mauthner perhaps. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
830:El orden inferior es un espejo del orden superior; las formas de la tierra corresponden a las formas del cielo; las manchas de la piel son un mapa de las incorruptibles constelaciones; Judas refleja de algún modo a Jesús. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
831:Es curiosa la suerte del escritor. Al principio es barroco, vanidosamente barroco, y al cabo de los años puede lograr, si son favorables los astros, no la sencillez, que no es nada, si no la modesta y secreta complejidad. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
832:La amistad no es menos misteriosa que el amor o que cualquiera de las otras faces de esta confusión que es la vida. He sospechado alguna vez que la única cosa sin misterio es la felicidad, porque se justifica por sí sola. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
833:Posible, pero no interesante —respondió Lönnrot—. Usted replicará que la realidad no tiene la menor obligación de ser interesante. Yo le replicaré que la realidad puede prescindir de esa obligación, pero no las hipótesis. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
834:Todo joven poeta se siente un Adán que nombra las cosas. Pero lo cierto es que un poeta no es Adán y que tiene una larga tradición detrás de él. Esa tradición es el lenguaje en el que escribe y la literatura que ha leído. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
835:Hemos soñado el mundo. Lo hemos soñado resistente, misterioso, visible, ubicuo en el espacio y firme en el tiempo; pero hemos consentido en su arquitectura tenues y eternos insterticios de sinrazón para saber que es falso. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
836:Oh, Buenos Aires, I have traveled around the world, but I’ve never been separated from you,” said Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges. And Saint Thomas said, “A friendship that can end has never been a true friendship.” In ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky, #NFDB
837:There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
838:As to my writing short pieces, there are two reasons I can give you. The first is my invincible laziness. The second is that I've always been fond of short stories, and it always took me some trouble to get through a novel. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
839:Ciegamente reclama duración el alma arbitraria cuando la tiene asegurada en vidas ajenas, cuando tú mismo eres la continuación realizada de quienes no alcanzaron tu tiempo y otros serán (y son) tu inmortalidad en la tierra. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
840:Don’t go on multiplying the mysteries,’ Unwin said. 'They should be kept simple. Bear in mind Poe’s purloined letter, bear in mind Zangwill’s locked room.’
'Or made complex,’ replied Dunraven. 'Bear in mind the universe. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
841:Perhaps in order to write a really great book, you must be rather unaware of the fact. You can slave away at it and change every adjective to some other adjective, but perhaps you can write better if you leave the mistakes. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
842:I kept asking myself how a book could be infinite. I could not imagine any other than a cyclic volume, circular. A volume whose last page would be the same as the first and so have the possibility of continuing indefinitely. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
843:In the course of a life devoted less to living than to reading, I have verified many times that literary intentions and theories are nothing more than stimuli and that the final work usually ignores or even contradicts them. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
844:Once I am dead, there will be no lack of pious hands to throw me over the railing; my grave will be the fathomless air; my body will sink endlessly and decay and dissolve in the wind generated by the fall, which is infinite. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
845:Sabemos que el pasado, el presente y el porvenir ya están, minucia por minucia, en la profética mente de Dios, en Su eternidad; lo extraño es que los hombres puedan mirar, indefinidamente, hacia atrás pero no hacia adelante. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
846:El ejercicio de las letras es misterioso; lo que opinamos es efímero y opto por la tesis platónica de la Musa y no por la de Poe, que razonó, o fingió razonar, que la escritura de un poema es una operación de la inteligencia. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
847:En av lärorna på Tlön går så långt att den förnekar tiden: den tänker sig att nuet är oändligt, att framtiden inte är verklig annat än som en förväntan i nuet, att det förflutna inte är verkligt annat än som ett minne i nuet. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
848:The exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to construct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the others like a Platonic archetype, an object whose virtues are not diminished by the passage of time. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
849:There is an hour of the afternoon when the plain is on the verge of saying something. It never says, or perhaps it says it infinitely, or perhaps we do not understand it, or we understand it and it is untranslatable as music. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
850:The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Funes the Memorious,#NFDB
851:Upstream, Arkansas and Ohio have their bottomlands, too, populated by a jaundiced and hungry-looking race, prone to fevers, whose eyes gleam at the sight of stone and iron, for they know only sand and driftwood and muddy water. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
852:Depois refleti que todas as coisas nos acontecem precisamente, precisamente agora. Séculos de séculos e apenas no presente ocorrem os fatos; inumeráveis homens no ar, na terra e mar, e tudo o que realmente sucede, sucede a mim... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
853: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, #NFDB
854:Perhaps a feature of the crucified face lurks in every mirror; perhaps the face died, was erased, so that God may be all of us. Who knows but that tonight we may see it in the labyrinth of dreams, and tomorrow not know we saw it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
855:If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell. Let me be outraged and annihilated, but for one instant, in one being, let Your enormous Library be justified. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
856:When the clocks of midnight squander a generous time, I will go further than Ulysses’ oarsmen to the realm of dreams, inaccessible to human nature. From that underwater region, I rescue fragments that I do not begin to understand. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
857:Y quizá la única manera de producir una obra de arte perdurable sea no tomándola demasiado en serio, no dándole mayor importancia, distrayéndose un poco o, como dirían los psicólogos actuales, dejando que la subconsciencia influya ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
858:Friendship, you know, is as mysterious as love or any other state of this confusion that we call life. In fact, I have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
859:O que um homem faz é como se todos os homens o fizessem. Por isso não é injusto que uma desobediência num jardim contamine a todos; por isso não é injusto que a crucificação de um único judeu baste para salvar todo o gênero humano. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
860:Then I reflect that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
861:Danten kommentaattori Tomaso Casini muistuttaa tässä yhteydessä toscanalaisesta legendasta, jonka mukaan Herra rankaisi Kainia vangitsemalla tämän kuuhun ja määräten tämän kantamaan piikkistä risukimppua aina päivien loppuun saakka. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
862:I am almost sure to be blotted out by death, but sometimes I think it is not impossible that I may continue to live in some other manner after my physical death . Or, as Hamlet wonders, what dreams will come when we leave this body? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
863:I am pleased with defeat because it has occurred, because it is irrevocably united to all those events which are, which were, and which will be, because to censure or to deplore a single real occurrence is to blaspheme the universe. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
864:My friends tell me that I am an intruder, that I don't really write when I attempt poetry. But those of my friends who write in prose say that I'm no writer when I attempt prose. So really I don't know what to do, I'm in a quandary. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
865:I clarified that I myself was Colombian.
"What is 'being Colombian'?"
"I'm not sure," I replied. "It's an act of faith."
"Like being Norwegian," she said, nodding.
I can recall nothing further of what was said that night. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
866:This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
867:Ts'ui Pe must have said once: I am withdrawing to write a book. And another time: I am withdrawing to construct a labyrinth. Every one imagined two works; to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
868:Differing from Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not think of time as absolute and uniform. He believed it an infinite series of times, in a dizzily growing, ever spreading network of diverging, converging and parallel times. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
869:The Moon"
There is such loneliness in that gold.
The moon of the nights is not the moon
Who the first Adam saw. The long centuries
Of human vigil have filled her
With ancient lament. Look at her. She is your mirror. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
870:The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all of these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
871:Yo había comprendido hace muchos años que no hay cosa en el mundo que no sea germen de un Infierno posible: un rostro, una palabra, una brújula, un aviso de cigarrillos, podrían enloquecer a una persona, si ésta no lograra olvidarlos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
872:Yo había comprendido hace muchos años que no hay cosa en el mundo que no sea germen de un Infierno posible; un rostro, una palabra, una brújula, un aviso de cigarrillos, podrían enloquecer a una persona, si ésta no lograra olvidarlos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
873: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, #NFDB
874:¿Quieres ver lo que no vieron ojos humanos? Mira la luna. ¿Quieres oír lo que los oídos no oyeron? Oye el grito del pájaro. ¿Quieres tocar lo que no tocaron las manos? Toca la tierra. Verdaderamente digo que Dios está por crear el mundo ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
875:Why do you seem so annoyed at what I'm saying?" "Because we're too much like each other. I loathe your face, which is a caricature of mine, I loathe your voice, which is a mockery of mine, I loathe your pathetic syntax, which is my own. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
876:I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
877:There is nothing very remarkable about
being immortal; with the exception of mankind,
all creatures are immortal, for they know
nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and
incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
878:I would define the baroque as that style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities, and that borders on self-caricature. The baroque is the final stage in all art, when art flaunts and squanders its resources. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
879:The critics often invent authors; they select two dissimilar works - the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say - attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
880:¿Existe ese Aleph en lo íntimo de una piedra? ¿Lo he visto cuando vi todas las cosas y lo he olvidado? Nuestra mente es porosa para el olvido; yo mismo estoy falseando y perdiendo, bajo la trágica erosión de los años, los rasgos de Beatriz ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
881:I would say, however, that romantic sentiment is a keen and pathetic sense of time, a few hours of amorous delight, the idea that everything passes away; a deeper sentiment for autumn, for twilight, for the passing nature of our own lives. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
882:Si el honor y la sabiduría y la felicidad no son para mí, que sean para otros. Que el cielo exista, aunque mi lugar sea el infierno. Que yo sea ultrajado y aniquilado, pero que en un instante, en un ser, Tu enorme Biblioteca se justifique. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
883:Solomon saith: There is no new thing upon
the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination,
that all knowledge was but remembrance; so
Solomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is
but oblivion.
Francis Bacon: Essays, LVIII ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
884:Why do you seem so annoyed at what I'm saying?"
"Because we're too much like each other. I loathe your face, which is a caricature of mine, I loathe your voice, which is a mockery of mine, I loathe your pathetic syntax, which is my own. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
885:A pesar de que la vida de un hombre se componga de miles y miles de momentos y días, esos muchos instantes y esos muchos días pueden ser reducidos a uno: el momento en que un hombre averigua quién es, cuando se ve cara a cara consigo mismo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
886:Years of solitude had taught him that, in one's memory, all days tend to be the same, but that there is not a day, not even in jail or in the hospital, which does not bring surprises, which is not a translucent network of minimal surprises. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
887:Kafka had the sense of guilt. I don't think I have because I don't believe in free will. Because what I have done has been done, well, for me or through me. But I haven't done it really. But I don't believe in free will, I can't feel guilty. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
888: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, #NFDB
889:Delle filosofie, nell'emisfero boreale, accade ció che nell'emisfero australe accade dei sostantivi: il fatto che ogni filosofia non possa essere, in partenza, che un gioco dialettico, una Philosophie des Als Ob, ha contribuito a moltiplicarle. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
890:I know of one semibarbarous zone whose librarians repudiate the "vain and superstitious habit" of trying to find sense in books, equating such a quest with attempting to find meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines on the palms of one's hand. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
891:Dicen que lo parió un fatigado vientre irlandés, pero se crió entre negros. En ese caos de catinga y de motas gozó el primado que conceden las pecas y una crencha rojiza. Practicaba el orgullo de ser blanco; también era esmirriado, chúcaro, soez. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
892:Dijo Tennyson que si pudiéramos comprender una sola flor sabríamos quiénes somos, y qué es el mundo. Tal vez quiso decir que no hay hecho, por humilde que sea, que no implique la historia universal y su infinita concatenación de efectos y causas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
893:Que muera conmigo el misterio que está escrito en los tigres. Quien ha entrevisto el universo, quien ha entrevisto los ardientes designios del universo, no puede pensar en un hombre, en sus triviales dichas o desventuras, aunque ese hombre sea él ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
894:Éste es el final de la historia de los cuarenta y siete hombres leales —salvo que no tiene final, porque los otros hombres, que no somos leales tal vez, pero que nunca perderemos del todo la esperanza de serlo, seguiremos honrándolos con palabras. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
895:Many people have thought of me as a thinker, as a philosopher, or even as a mystic. Well the truth is that though I have found reality perplexing enough - in fact, I find it gets more perplexing all the time - I never think of myself as a thinker. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
896:...De sus labios oí por primera vez el nombre del rey que era, Gunnlaug. Supe que librada la última guerra, miraba con recelo a los forasteros y que su hábito era crucificarlos. Para eludir ese destino, menos adecuado a un hombre que a un Dios, ... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
897:El Ángel me decía que los carneros no eran del color de los tigres, el Satán me decía que el Poderoso quería que lo fueran y se valía de mi astucia y mi púrpura. Ahora yo sé que el Ángel y el Satán erraban la verdad y que todo color es aborrecible. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
898:Je n'écris pas pour une petite élite dont je n'ai cure, ni pour cette entité platonique adulée qu'on surnomme la Masse. Je ne crois pas à ces deux abstractions, chères au démagogue. J'écris pour moi, pour mes amis et pour adoucir le cours du temps. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
899: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, #NFDB
900:Basta caminar algún trecho por la implacable rigidez que los espejos del pasado nos abren, para sentirnos forasteros y azorarnos cándidamente de nuestras jornadas antiguas. No hay en ellas comunidad de intenciones, ni un mismo viento que las empuja. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
901:Después reflexioné que todas las cosas le suceden a uno precisamente, precisamente ahora. Siglos de siglos y sólo en el presente ocurren los hechos; innumerables hombres en el aire, en la tierra y el mar, y todo lo que realmente pasa me pasa a mí... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
902:There is a river whose waters give
immortality; somewhere there must be
another river whose waters take it away. The
number of rivers is not infinite; an immortal
traveler wandering the world will someday have
drunk from them all. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
903:Was it you that killed me, or did I kill you?" Abel answered. "I don't remember anymore; here we are, together, like before."
"Now I know that you have truly forgiven me," Cain said, "because forgetting is forgiving. I, too, will try to forget. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
904:I kept asking myself how a book could be infinite. I could not imagine any other than a cyclic volume, circular. A volume whose last page would be the same as the first and so have the possibility of continuing indefinitely.~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #NFDB
905:Una vez, tu finado padre nos dijo que no se puede medir el tiempo por días, como el dinero por centavos o pesos, porque los pesos son iguales y cada día es distinto y tal vez cada hora. No comprendí muy bien lo que decía, pero me quedó grabada la frase. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
906:Why did the Argentine dictatorship invade the British Falkland Islands in 1982? The great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges dismissed the entire Argentine–British dispute over the isolated, windswept rocks as a pathetic fight between “two bald men over a comb. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
907:Whatever 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 unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
908: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, #NFDB
909:Quain soleva ripetere che i lettori sono una specie ormai estinta. "Non v'é europeo - ragiovana, - che non sia uno scrittore, in potenza o in atto". Affermava anche che, tra le diverse felicitá che puó procurare la letteratura, la piú alta é l'invenzione. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
910:Tačno u tom trenutku čovek pomisli:
Šta ne bih dao za sreću
da budem pored tebe na Islandu
u velikom nepomičnom danu
i da delim sadašnjost
kao što se deli muzika
ili ukus ploda.
Tačno u tom trenutku
čovek je bio sa njom na Islandu. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
911:This web of time – the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries – embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
912:Villari trataba de vivir el mero presente, sin recuerdos ni previsiones; los primeros le importaba menos que las últimas. Oscuramente creyó intuir que el pasado es la sustancia de que el tiempo está hecho; por ello es que este se vuelve pasado en seguida. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
913:What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
914:Emshwiller’s like a wild mixture of Italo Calvino (intellectual games) and Grace Paley (perfect honesty) and Fay Weldon (outrageous wit) and Jorge Luis Borges (pure luminosity), but no—her voice is perfectly her own. She isn’t like anybody. She’s different. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
915:I have tried (I am not sure how successfully) to write plain tales. I dare not say they are simple; there is not a simple page, a simple word, on earth -\-\ for all pages, all words, predicate the universe, whose most notorious attribute is its complexity. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
916:Quain solía argumentar que los lectores eran una especie ya extinta. «No hay europeo -razonaba-que no sea un escritor, en potencia o en acto.» Afirmaba también que de las diversas felicidades que puede ministrar la literatura, la más alta era la invención. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
917:Činjenica je da sam jedinstven. Ne zanima me šta jedan čovek može saopštiti drugim ljudima, kao i onaj filozof ja smatram da se veštinom pisanja ništa ne može preneti. Za dosadne i proste sitnice nema mesta u mome duhu, koji je predodređen za velike stvari. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
918:Desvarío laborioso y empobrecedor el de componer vastos libros; el de explayar en quinientas páginas una idea cuya perfecta exposición oral cabe en pocos minutos. Mejor procedimiento es simular que esos libros ya existen y ofrecer un resumen, un comentario. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
919:I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about
yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
920:The I feel a contentment in defeat, I reflected, simply because defeat has come, because it is infinitely connected to all the acts that are, that were, and that shall be, because to censure or deplore a single real act is to blaspheme against the universe. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
921: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, #NFDB
922:When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation."
[As attributed by Alastair Reid in Neruda and Borges, The New Yorker, June 24, 1996; as well as in The Talk of the Town, The New Yorker, July 7, 1986] ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
923:Time is the thing I am made of. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that tears me apart, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
924:abía aprendido sin esfuerzo el inglés, el francés, el portugués, el latín. Sospecho, sin embargo, que no era muy capaz de pensar. Pensar es olvidar diferencias, es generalizar, abstraer. En el abarrotado mundo de Funes no había sino detalles, casi inmediatos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
925:Había aprendido sin esfuerzo el inglés, el francés, el portugués, el latín. Sospecho, sin embargo, que no era muy capaz de pensar. Pensar es olvidar diferencias, es generalizar, abstraer. En el abarrotado mundo de Funes no había sino detalles, casi inmediatos ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
926:Sentí, en la última página, que mi narración era un símbolo del hombre que yo fui, mientras la escribía y que, para redactar esa narración, yo tuve que ser aquel hombre y que, para ser aquel hombre, yo tuve que redactar esa narración, y así hasta lo infinito. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
927:There is no intellectual exercise that is not ultimately pointless. A philosophical doctrine is, at first, a plausible description of the universe; the years go by, and it is a mere chapter -- if not a paragraph or proper noun -- in the history of philosophy. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
928:He intentado, no se con que fortuna, la redacción de cuentos directos. No me atrevo a afirmar que son sencillos; no hay en la tierra, una sola página, una sola palabra, que lo sea, ya que todas postulan el universo, cuyo más notorio atributo es la complejidad. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
929:Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety; this controversy enabled him to fulfill his obligations with many books which seemed to reproach him for his neglect.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, The Theologians,#NFDB
930:And I believe there was a rabbi who wrote that the Holy Scriptures were specifically destined, predestined, for each of its readers. That is, it has a different meaning if any of you read it or if I read it, or if it is read by men in the future or in the past. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
931:Fuera de algunas amistades y de muchas costumbres, el problemático ejercicio de la literatura constituía su vida; como todo escritor, medía las virtudes de los otros por lo ejecutado por ellos y pedía que los otros lo midieran por lo que vislumbraba o planeaba. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
932:All things left her, all
But one. Her highborn courtliness
Accompanied her to the end,
Beyond the rapture and its eclipse,
In a way like an angel's. Of Elvira
The first thing that I saw - such years ago -
Was her smile and also it was the last. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
933:Em tempos de auge a conjectura de que a existência do Homem é uma quantidade constante e invariável pode entristecer ou irritar; em tempos que declinam (como este), é a promessa de que nenhum opróbrio, nenhuma calamidade nem nenhum ditador poderá empobrecer-nos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
934:I hardly know what I'm going to write - an article, a story, a poem in free verse - or in some regular form. I only know that when I have the first sentence. And when the first sentence makes a kind of pattern, then I find out the kind of rhythm I'm looking for. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
935:...notai che le armature di ferro di plaza Costituciòn avevno cambiato non so quale pubblicità di sigarette; il fatto mi dispiacque, perché compresi che l'incessante e vasto universo già si separava da lei e che quel mutamento era il primo di una serie infinita. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
936:Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
937:Cada persona que pasa por nuestra vida es única. Siempre deja un poco de sí y se lleva un poco de nosotros. Habrá los que se llevarán mucho, pero no habrá de los que no nos dejarán nada. Esta es la prueba evidente de que dos almas no se encuentran por casualidad. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
938: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, #NFDB
939:Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
940:Para percibir la distancia que hay entre lo divino y lo humano, basta comparar
estos rudos símbolos trémulos que mi falible mano garabatea en la tapa de un libro, con las letras orgánicas del interior: puntuales, delicadas, negrísimas, inimitablemente simétricas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
941:(The mystics claim that their ecstasy reveals to them a circular chamber containing a great circular book, whose spine is continuous and which follows the complete circle of the walls; but their testimony is suspect; their words, obscure. This cyclical book is God.) ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
942:We are ignorant of the meaning of the dragon in the same way that we are ignorant of the meaning of the universe; but there is something in the dragon’s image that fits man’s imagination, and this accounts for the dragon’s appearance in different places and periods. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
943:Desmentir que hay un Dios es afirmar la certeza del concepto divino, pues de lo contrario ignoraríamos cuál es la idea derruida por la negación precitada y por carencia de palabras nuestra negación no podría ni formularse. ("Acerca de Unamuno, poeta" - Inquisiciones) ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
944: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, #NFDB
945:The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said. Looking for metaphors, for example: When I was a young man I was always hunting for new metaphors. Then I found out that really good metaphors are always the same. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
946:Preveo que el hombre se resignará cada día a empresas más atroces; pronto no habrá sino guerreros y bandoleros; les doy este consejo: ´El ejecutor de una empresa atroz debe imaginar que ya la ha cumplido, debe imponerse un porvenir que sea irrevocable como el pasado.´ ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
947:La Recoleta
...
Aqui não estarei eu. Estarão o meu cabelo e as minhas unhas, que não saberão que o resto estará morto, e continuarão a crescer e serão pó.
Aqui não estarei eu, que serei parte do esquecimento que é a frágil substância de que é feito o universo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
948:kitaplık sahibi tüm insanlar gibi aurelianus da sahip olduğu bütün kitapları hakkını vererek okumamış olmakla suçlardı kendini.bu tartışma ona kitaplığının raflarında ihmal edildikleri için ayıplar gibi duran birçok kitabı gözden geçirme fırsatı verdi.(Çev.:Tomris Uyar) ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
949: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, #NFDB
950:Esa vida es nueva para él, y a veces atroz, pero ya está en su sangre, porque lo mismo que los hombres de otras naciones veneran y presienten el mar, así nosotros (también el hombre que entreteje estos símbolos) ansiamos la llanura inagotable que resuena bajo los cascos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
951:My father and he had cemented (the verb is excessive) one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether. They used to exchange books and periodicals; they would beat one another at chess, without saying a word. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
952:Todos los hombres se sintieron señores de un tesoro intacto y secreto. No había problema personal o mundial cuya elocuente solución no existiera: en algún hexágono. El universo estaba justificado, el universo bruscamente usurpó las dimensiones ilimitadas de la esperanza. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
953:Dios totalmente se hizo hombre hasta la infamia, hombre hasta la reprobación y el abismo. Para salvarnos, pudo elegir cualquiera de los destinos que traman la perpleja red de la historia; pudo ser Alejandro o Pitágoras o Rurik o Jesús; eligió un ínfimo destino: fue judas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
954:Ts'ui Pe must have said once: I am withdrawing to write a book. And another time: I am withdrawing to construct a labyrinth. Every one imagined two works; to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing." ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #index, #NFDB
955: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, #NFDB
956:You don't have to try to be contemporary. You are already contemporary. What one has in mythology is being evolved all the time. Personally, I think I can do with Greek and Old Norse mythology. For example, I don't think I stand in need of planes or of railways or of cars. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
957:Nadie puede leer dos mil libros. En los cuatro siglos que vivo no habré pasado de una media docena. Además no importa leer sino releer. La imprenta, ahora abolida, ha sido uno de los peores males del hombre, ya que tendió a multiplicar hasta el vértigo textos innecesarios". ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
958:There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe; with the passage of the years it becomes a mere chapter if not a paragraph or a name in the history of philosophy. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
959:Knjiga je nekaj več kot besedna struktura. Je dialog, ki ga začne s svojim bralcem. Ta dialog je neskončen, književnost je neizčrpna, in to zaradi zelo preprostega razloga - ker je vsaka knjiga taka. Knjiga ni stvar brez komunikacije: je razmerje, je opora neštetih razmerij. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
960:I, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man, myself alone. From out of a whirlwind the voice of God replied: I am not, either. I dreamed the world the way you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare: one of the forms of my dream was you, who, like me, are many and one. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
961:A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words—or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols—spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
962:Denostó con amargura a los críticos; luego, más benigno, los equiparó a esas personas, «que no disponen de metales preciosos ni tampoco de prensas de vapor, laminadores y ácidos sulfúricos para la acuñación de tesoros, pero que pueden indicar a los otros el sitio de un tesoro». ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
963:I have preferred to teach my students not English literature but my love for certain authors, or, even better, certain pages, or even better than that, certain lines. One falls in love with a line, then with a page, then with an author. Well, why not? It is a beautiful process. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
964:If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell. Let me be outraged and annihilated, but for one instant, in one being, let Your enormous Library be justified.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
965:But I will relate what happened with absolute honesty; that, perhaps, will help me understand it. After all, when one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a man that observes and narrates it and no longer the man that performed it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
966:En todas las ficciones, cada vez que un hombre se enfrenta con diversas alternativas, opta por una y elimina las otras; en la del casi inextricable Ts'ui Pên, opta "simultáneamente" por todas. Crea, así, diversos porvenires, diversos tiempos, que también proliferan y se bifurcan. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
967:A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words-or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols-spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
968:A quien leyere
Si las páginas de este libro consienten algún verso feliz, perdóneme el lector la descortesía de haberlo usurpado yo, previamente. Nuestras nadas poco difieren; es trivial y fortuita la circunstancia de que tú seas el lector de estos ejercicios, y yo su redactor. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
969:I can’t talk about my books. I have written them and tried to forget them. I have written once, and readers have read me many times, no? I try to think of what I wrote, it’s very unhealthy to think about the past, the case of elegies is very sad, as much as the case of complaints. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
970:Vi el Aleph, desde todos los puntos, vi en el Aleph la tierra, vi mi cara y mis vísceras, vi tu cara, y sentí vértigo y lloré, porque mis ojos habían visto ese objeto secreto y conjetural, cuyo nombre usurpan los hombres, pero que ningún hombre ha mirado: el inconcebible universo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
971:Biri dedi ki: Sen uyanıklığa değil, önceki bir düşe uyanmışsın.O düş bir başka düşle sarmallıdır, o da bir başkasıyla ve bu böyle sonsuza kadar gider, sonsuz da kum tanelerinin sayısıdır. Geriye dönerken izlemen gereken yolun sonu yoktur ve sen bir daha gerçekten uyanmadan öleceksin. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
972:This web of time - the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries - embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not.~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #NFDB
973:Before unearthing this letter, I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite. I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular one. A book whose last page was identical with the first, a book which had the possibility of continuing indefinitely. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
974:But I will relate what happened with absolute honesty; that, perhaps, will help me understand it. After all, when one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a person that observes and narrates it and no longer the person that performed it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
975:I do not know whether music knows how to despair over music, or marble over marble, but literature is an art which knows how to prophesize the time in which it might have fallen silent, how to attack its own virtue, and how to fall in love with its own dissolution and court its own end. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
976:We (the indivisible divinity that works in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and firm in time, but we have allowed slight, and eternal, bits of the irrational to form part of its architecture so as to know that it is false. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
977:Arrasado el jardín, profanados los cálices y las aras, entraron a caballo los hunos en la biblioteca monástica y rompieron los libros incomprensibles y los vituperaron y los quemaron, acaso temerosos de que las letras encubrieran blasfemias contra su dios, que era una cimitarra de hierro. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
978:Halfway through his reclusion, Arredondo experienced more than once that almost timeless time. In the first of the house’s three patios there was cistern with a frog in it. It never occurred to Arredondo to think that the frog’s time, which borders on eternity, was what he himself sought. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
979:Lo recuerdo (yo no tengo derecho a pronunciar ese verbo sagrado, sólo un hombre en la tierra tuvo derecho y ese hombre ha muerto) con una oscura pasionaria en la mano, viéndola como nadie la ha visto, aunque la mirara desde el crepúsculo del día hasta el de la noche, toda una vida entera. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
980:Then he reflected that reality does not usually coincide with our anticipation of it; with a logic of his own he inferred that to forsee a circumstantial detail is to prevent its happening. Trusting in this weak magic, he invented, so that they would not happen, the most gruesome details. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
981:Hladik had rounded forty. Aside from a few friendships and many habits, the problematic exercise of literature constituted his life, Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
982:The people of Tlön are taught that the act of counting modifies the amount counted, turning indefinites into definites. The fact that several persons counting the same quantity come to the same result is for the psychologists of Tlön an example of the association of ideas or of memorization. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
983:Gradualmente, el enigma concreto que me atareaba me inquietó menos que el enigma genérico de una sentencia escrita por un dios. ¿Qué tipo de sentencia (me pregunté) construirá una mente absoluta? Consideré que aun en los lenguajes humanos no hay proposición que no implique el universo entero… ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
984:The web of time - the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect, or ignore each other through the centuries - embraces "every" possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not, and in yet others both of us exist. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
985:Although I'm very lazy when it comes to writing, I'm not that lazy when it comes to thinking. I like to develop the plan of a short story, then cut it as short as possible, try to evolve all the necessary details. I know far more about the characters than what actually comes out of the writing. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
986:In the earliest times, which were so susceptible to vague speculation and the inevitable ordering of the universe, there can have existed no division between the poetic and the prosaic. Everything must have been tinged with magic. Thor was not the god of thunder; he was the thunder and the god. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
987:I suppose every poet has his own private mythology. Maybe he's unaware of it. People tell me that I have evolved a private mythology of tigers, of blades, of labyrinths, and I"m unaware of the fact this is so. My readers are finding it all the time. But I think perhaps that is the duty of poet. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
988:Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces belaboured by time, certain twilights and certain places try to tell us something, or have said something we should have missed, or are about to say something; this imminence of a revelation which does not occur is, perhaps, the aesthetic phenomenon. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
989:La historia era increíble, en efecto, pero se impuso a todos, porque sustancialmente era cierta. Verdadero era el tono de Emma Zunz, verdadero el pudor, verdadero el odio. Verdadero también era el ultraje que había padecido; sólo eran falsas las circunstancias, la hora y uno o dos nombres propios. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
990:Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths?,#NFDB
991:The thought came over me that never would one full and absolute moment, containing all the others, justify my life, that all of my instants would be provisional phases, annihilators of the past turned to face the future, and that beyond the episodic, the present, the circumstantial, we were nobody. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
992:Cumplidos los cien años, el individuo puede prescindir del amor y de la amistad. Los males y la muerte involuntaria no lo amenazan. Ejerce alguna de las artes, la filosofía, las matemáticas o juega a un ajedrez solitario. Cuando quiere se mata. Dueño el hombre de su vida, lo es también de su muerte. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
993:In the vestibule there is a mirror, which faithfully duplicates appearances. Men often infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite - if it were, what need would there be for that illusory replication? I prefer to dream that burnished surfaces are a figuration and promise of the infinite. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
994:Por un tiempo, Borges mantuvo Palermo fuera de su conciencia literaria. Casi todo joven escrito rehuye escribir sobre la vida que lo rodea. Cree que es aburrida o vergonzosa (...) Por eso el joven escritor a menudo prefiere un tema exótico y lo presenta de un modo sofisticadamente complejo y oscuro. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
995:La muerte (o su alusión) hace preciosos y patéticos a los hombres. Estos conmueven por su condición de fantasmas; cada acto que ejecutan puede ser último; no hay rostro que no esté por desdibujarse como el rostro de un sueño. Todo entre los mortales tiene el valor de lo irrecuperable y de lo azaroso. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
996:Things became duplicated in Tlön; they also tend to become effaced and lose their details when they are forgotten. A classic example is the doorway which survived so long as it was visited by a beggar and disappeared at his death. At times some birds, a horse, have saved the ruins of an amphitheater. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
997:Application, resignation, and chance had gone into the writing; I saw, however, that Daneri's real work lay not in the poetry but in his invention of reasons why the poetry should be admired. Of course, this second phase of his effort modified the writing in his eyes, though not in the eyes of others. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
998:Las cosas se duplican en Tlön; propenden asimismo a borrarse ya perder los detalles cuando los olvida la gente. Es clásico el ejemplo de un umbral que perduró mientras lo visitaba un mendigo y que se perdió de vista a su muerte. A veces unos pájaros, un caballo han salvado las ruinas de un anfiteatro. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
999:The thought came over me that never would one full and absolute moment, containing all the others, justify my life, that all of my instants would be provisional phases, annihilators of the past turned to face the future, and that beyond the episodic, the present, the circumstantial, we were nobody.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1000:Considerai anche che nei linguaggi umani non c'è proposizione che non implichi l'universo intero; dire la tigre è dire le tigri che la generarono, i cervi e le testuggini che divorò, il pascolo di cui si alimentarono i cervi, la terra che fu madre del pascolo, il cielo che dette luce alla terra. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1001:I...have always known that my destiny was, above all, a literary destiny — that bad things and some good things would happen to me, but that, in the long run, all of it would be converted into words. Particularly the bad things, since happiness does not need to be transformed: happiness is its own end. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1002:I think of myself as being an ethical man, but I don't try to teach ethics. I have no message. I know little about contemporary life. I don't read a newspaper. I dislike politics and politicians. I belong to no party whatever. My private life is a private life. I try to avoid photography and publicity. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1003: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, #NFDB
1004:La música, los estados de felicidad, la mitología, las caras trabajadas por el tiempo, ciertos crepúsculos y ciertos lugares, quieren decirnos algo, o algo dijeron que no hubiéramos debido perder, o están por decir algo; esta inminencia de una revelación, que no se produce, es, quizá, el hecho estético. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1005:The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1006:I...have always known that my destiny was, above all, a literary destiny — that bad things and some good things would happen to me, but that, in the long run, all of it would be converted
into words. Particularly the bad things, since happiness does not need to be transformed: happiness is its own end. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1007:In the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future." -- Essay: "Kafka and his Precursors ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1008:I suspect, nevertheless, that he was not very
capable of thought. To think is to forget a difference, to
generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes
there were nothing but details, almost contiguous details.
The equivocal clarity of dawn penetrated along the
earthen patio. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1009:Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1010:La creencia en ell Zahir es islámica...Zahir en árabe, quiere decir notorio, visible; en tal sentido, es uno de los noventa y nueve nombres de Dios; la plebe, en tierras musulmanas, lo dice de "los seres o cosas que tienen la terrible virtud de ser inolvidables y cuya imagen acaba por enloquecer a la gente ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1011:The aesthetic event is something as evident, as immediate, as indefinable as love, the taste of fruit, of water. We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it with other words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1012:Music, feelings of happiness, mythology, faces worn by time, certain twilights and certain places, want to tell us something, or they told us something that we should not have missed, or they are about to tell us something; this imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, the esthetic event. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1013:Their books are also different. Works of fiction contain a single plot, with all its imaginable permutations. Those of a philosophical nature invariably include both the thesis and the antithesis, the rigorous pro and con of a doctrine. A book which does not contain its counterbook is considered incomplete. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1014:Cuando, en Ginebra o Zurich, la
fortuna
Quiso que yo también fuera poeta,
Me impuse, como todos, la secreta
Obligación de definir la luna.
Pensaba que el poeta es aquel
hombre
Que, como el rojo Adán del paraíso,
Impone a cada cosa su preciso
Y no verdadero y no sabido nombre. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1015:In the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future."
-- Essay: "Kafka and his Precursors ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1016:The aesthetic event is something as evident, as immediate, as indefinable as love, the taste of fruit, as water. We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it further with words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1017:The two projects I have indicated (an infinite vocabulary
for the natural series of numbers, and a usable mental
catalogue of all the images of memory) are lacking in sense,
but they reveal a certain stammering greatness. They allow
us to make out dimly, or to infer, the dizzying world of
Funes ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1018:Music, feelings of happiness, mythology, faces worn by time, certain twilights and certain places, want to tell us something, or they told us something that we should not have missed, or they are about to tell us something; this imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, 'the aesthetic event'. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1019:Moartea (ori pomenirea ei) îi face pe oameni preţioşi şi patetici. Şi condiţia lor de fantome te impresionează; orice faptă pe care o săvârşesc ar putea să fie ultima. Nu există chip care să nu se risipească precum chipurile din vis. Pentru muritori, totul se află sub pecetea irecuperabilului şi întâmplătorului. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1020:The truth is that we all live by leaving behind. Borges. That was it. Jorge Luis Borges’s Funes the Memorious, a book about a man who couldn’t forget anything, who was driven mad by his memory. Reading Borges had been light relief during her Camus phase, but that line had stuck with her. We all live by leaving behind. ~ Sarah Hilary, #NFDB
1021:What is a book?
A book seems, like a picture, to be a living being; and
yet if we ask it something, it does not answer. Then we
see that it is dead.In order to make the book into a
living thing, he invented—happily for us—the Platonic
dialogue, which forestalls the reader’s doubts
and questions. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1022:Funes El Memorioso (Jorge Luis Borges) - Tu subrayado en la página 6 | Location 83-85 | Añadido el domingo, 22 de junio de 2014 16:54:20 Lo cierto es que vivimos postergando todo lo postergable; tal vez todos sabemos profundamente que somos inmortales y que tarde o temprano, todo hombre hará todas las cosas y sabrá todo. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1023:My memory carries me back to a certain evening
some sixty years ago, to my father’s library in Buenos
Aires. I see him; I see the gaslight; I could place my
hand on the shelves. I know exactly where to find
Burton’s Arabian Nights and Prescott’s Conquest of
Peru, though the library exists no longer. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1024:Pensé en un mundo sin memoria, sin tiempo; consideré la posibilidad de un lenguaje que ignorara los sustantivos, un lenguaje de verbos impersonales y de indeclinables epítetos. Así fueron muriendo los días y con los días los años, pero algo parecido a la felicidad ocurrió una mañana. Llovió, con lentitud poderosa. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1025:I don't think I can really believe in doomsday; I could hardly believe in rewards and punishments, in heaven or hell. As I wrote down in one of my sonnets - I seem to be always plagiarizing, imitating myself or somebody else for that matter - I think I am quite unworthy of heaven or of hell, and even of immortality. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1026:I foresee that man will resign himself each day to more atrocious undertakings; soon there will be no one but warriors and brigands; I give them this counsel: The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1027:If ten thousand people die with you, their participation in your lot will not make you be ten thousand times more hungry nor multiply the time of your agony ten thousand times. Do not let yourself be overcome by the horrible sum of human sufferings; such a sum does not exist. Neither poverty nor pain are cumulative. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1028:Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1029:A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1030:I am interested in the past. Perhaps one of the reasons is we cannot make, cannot change the past. I mean you can hardly unmake the present. But the past after all is merely to say a memory, a dream. You know my own past seems continually changed when I am remembering it, or reading things that are interesting to me. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1031:Tal vez quiso decir que el mundo visible se da entero en cada representación, de igual manera que la voluntad, según Schopenhauer, se da entera en cada sujeto. Los cabalistas entendieron que el hombre es un microcosmo, un simbólico espejo del universo; todo, según Tennyson, lo sería. Todo, hasta el intolerable Zahir. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1032:Un buen esclavo les costaba mil dólares y no duraba mucho. Algunos cometían la ingratitud de enfermarse y morir. Había que sacar de esos inseguros el mayor rendimiento. Por eso los tenían en los campos desde el primer sol hasta el último; por eso requerían de las fincas una cosecha anual de algodón o tabaco o azúcar. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1033:A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1034:Am cugetat că nici chiar în limbajele umane nu există propoziție care să nu implice universul întreg; a spune "tigrul" înseamnă a spune tigrii care l-au zămislit, cerbii și țestoasele pe care el le-a devorat, pășunea din care s-au hrănit cerbii, pământul care a fost maică a pășunii, cerul care a dat lumină pământului. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1035:I reread these negative remarks and realize that I do not know whether music can despair of music or marble of marble. I do know that literature is an art that can foresee the time when it will be silenced, an art that can become inflamed with its own virtue, fall in love with its own decline, and court its own demise. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1036:Viví hechizado, encarcelado en un cuerpo
y en la humildad de un alma.
Conocí la memoria,
esa moneda que no es nunca la misma.
Conocí la esperanza y el temor,
esos dos rostros del incierto futuro.
Conocí la vigilia, el sueño, los sueños,
la ignorancia, la carne,
los torpes laberintos de la razón. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1037:In Book VIII of the Odyssey we read that the gods weave misfortunes into the pattern of events to make a song for future generations to sing.
----------
Στην Όγδοη Ραψωδία της Οδύσσειας διαβάζουμε ότι οι θεοί κλώθουν τις συμφορές για να μη λείπουν από τις μελλούμενες γενιές θέματα για τραγούδια. (μτφ Δ. Καλοκύρης) ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1038:God made Himself totally a man but a man to the point of infamy, a man to the point of reprobation and the abyss. To save us, He could have chosen *any* of the destinies which make up the complex web of history; He could have been Alexander or Pythagoras or Rurik or Jesus; He chose the vilest destiny of all: He was Judas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1039:Suggestions for further reading Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem; Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones; Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha; Deepak Chopra, God: A Story of Revelation; Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet; Lawrence Kushner, Kabbalah: A Love Story; C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith; Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1040: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 an 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, #NFDB
1041: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, #NFDB
1042:comprendió con alguna amargura que
nada podía esperar de aquellos alumnos que aceptaban con pasividad
su doctrina y sí de aquellos que arriesgaban, a veces, una contradicción
razonable. Los primeros, aunque dignos de amor y de
bueno afecto, no podían ascender a individuos; los últimos preexistían
un poco más. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1043:If I write a fantastic story, I'm not writing something willful. On the contrary, I am writing something that stands for my feelings, or for my thoughts. So that, in a sense, a fantastic story is as real and perhaps more real than a mere circumstantial story. Because after all, circumstances come and go, and symbols remain. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1044:is a quote from Jorge Luis Borges, but don’t be fooled by that erudition. Yasmina Reza’s Happy are the Happy is universal and accessible to anyone who has ever wanted to be, or has been, in a relationship – as long as she wants to admit her ambivalences. It’s dark in places, and funny, and unusual; but these 20 short chapters, each ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1045:Little did they suspect that the years would end by wearing away the disharmony.
Little did they suspect that La Mancha and Montiel and the knight's frail figure would be, for the future, no less poetic than Sinbad's haunts or Ariosto's vast geographies.
For myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1046:Another Celtic legend tells of the duel of two famous bards. One, accompanying himself on the harp, sang from the coming day to the coming of twilight. Then, when the stars or the moon came out, the first bard handed the harp to the second, who laid the instrument aside and rose to his feet. The first singer admitted defeat. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1047:I confess that I have not cleared a path through all seven hundred pages, I confess to having examined only bits and pieces, and yet I know what it is, with that bold and legitimate certainty with which we assert our knowledge of a city, without ever having been rewarded with the intimacy of all the many streets it includes. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1048:The famed author Robert Lewis Stevenson declared that he'd trained his Brownies to be writers. As he slept, they would whisper fantastic plots in his ear -- for example, the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and the diabolical Mr. Hyde, and that episode in "Olalla" when a young man from an old Spanish family bites his sister's hand. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1049:People think that I've committed myself to idealism, to solipsism, or to doctrines of the cabala, because I've used them in my tales. But really I was only trying to see what could be done with them. On the other hand, it might be argued that if I use them it's because I was feeling an affinity to them. Of course, that's true. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1050:I don't think we're capable of knowledge, but I like to keep an open mind. So if you ask me whether I believe in an afterlife or not, whether I believe in God or not, I can only answer you that all things are possible. And if all things are possible, heaven and hell and the angels are also possible. They're not to be ruled out. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1051: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, #NFDB
1052:Herakliti thote se njeriu nuk lahet kurre dy here ne te njejtin lume. Ne nuk lahemi kurre ne te njejtin lume, sepse ujerat e tij nderrojne. Akoma me e tmerrshme eshte se ne nuk jemi me pak ujore se lumi. Sa here qe lexojme nje liber, libri ndryshon, ngjyrimi i fjaleve te tij eshte tjeter. Sepse librat jane mbrujtur me te shkuar. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1053:Dormir, según se sabe, es el mas secreto de nuestros actos. Le dedicamos una tercera parte de nuestra vida y no lo comprendemos. Para algunos no es otra cosa que el eclipse de nuestra vigilia; para otros, un estado más complejo, que abarca a un tiempo el ayer, el ahora y el mañana; para otros, una no interrumpida serie de sueños. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1054:This has happened and will happen again,' said Euphorbus. 'You are not lighting a pyre, you are lighting a labyrinth of flames. If all the fires I have seen were gathered together here, they would not fit on earth and the angels would be blinded. I have said this many times.' Then he cried out, because the flames had reached him. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1055:I don’t think you should try to be loyal to your century or your opinions, because you are being loyal to them all the time. You have a certain voice, a certain kind of face, a certain way of writing, and you can’t run away from them even if you want to. So why bother to be modern or contemporary, since you can’t be anything else? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1056:Perfilados bien por un fondo de paredes celestes o de cielo alto, dos compadritos envainados en seria ropa negra bailan sobre zapatos de mujer un baile gravísimo, que es el de los cuchillos parejos, haste que de una oreja salta un clavel porque el cuchillo ha entrado en un hombre, que cierra con su muerte horizontal el baile sin música. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1057:The taste of the apple ... lies in the contact of the fruit with the palate, not in the fruit itself; in a similar way ... poetry lies in the meeting of poem and reader, not in the lines of symbols printed on the pages of a book. What is essential is the aesthetic act, the thrill, the almost physical emotion that comes with each reading. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1058:In 1883, an earthquake that lasted ninety seconds shook the south of Italy. In that earthquake, he lost his parents and his sister; he himself was buried by rubble. Two or three hours later, he was rescued. To ward off total despair, he resolved to think about the Universe - a general procedure among the unfortunate, and sometimes a balm. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1059:It is a fact, indeed, that most of
the great teachers of mankind have been not writers
but speakers. Think of Pythagoras, Christ, Socrates,
the Buddha, and so on. And since I have spoken of
Socrates, I would like to say something about Plato. I
remember Bernard Shaw said that Plato was the dramatist
who invented Socrates ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1060:El prófugo espera la libertad. Entonces los mulatos nebulosos de Lazarus Morell se transmitían una orden que podía no pasar de una seña y lo libraban de la vista, del oído, del tacto, del día, de la infamia, del tiempo, de los bienhechores, de la misericordia, del aire, de los perros, del universo, de la esperanza, del sudor y de él mismo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1061:The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse to that of Poe, who reasoned, or feigned to reason, that the writing of a poem is an act of the intelligence. It never fails to amaze me that the classics hold a romantic theory of poetry, and a romantic poet a classical theory. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1062:The two important facts I should say, are emotion, and then words arising from emotion. I don't think you can write in an emotionless way. If you attempt it, the result is artificial. I don't like that kind of writing. I think that if a poem is really great, you should think of it as having written itself despite the author. It should flow. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1063:A circle drawn on a blackboard, a right triangle, a rhombus--all these are forms we can fully intuit; Ireneo could do the same with the stormy mane of a young colt, a small herd of cattle on a mountainside, a flickering fire and its uncountable ashes, and the many faces of a dead man at a wake. I have no idea how many stars he saw in the sky. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1064:El pensamiento más fugaz obedece a un dibujo invisible y puede coronar, o inaugurar, una forma secreta. Sé de quienes obraban el mal para que en los siglos futuros resultara el bien, o hubiera resultado en los ya pretéritos... Encarados así, todos nuestros actos son justos, pero también son indiferentes. No hay méritos morales o intelectuales. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1065:Bir şeyi görebilmek için onu anlamak gerekir. Koltuk insan bedenini, eklemlerini ve tüm organlarını önceden kabullenir; makas da kesme eylemini. Bir lamba ya da bir taşıt için ne demeli? Bir vahşi, misyonerin İncil'ini algılayamaz; bir gemi yolcusu halatları tayfaların gördüğü gibi göremez. Evreni gerçekten görebilmiş olsaydık belki onu anlardık. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1066:I always imagine them at nightfall, in the dusk of a slum or a vacant lot, in that long, quiet moment when things are gradually left alone, with their backs to the sunset, and when colors are like memories or premonitions of other colors. We must not be too prodigal with our angels; they are the last divinities we harbor, and they might fly away. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1067:Two aesthetics exist: the passive aesthetic of mirrors and the active aesthetic of prisms. Guided by the former, art turns into a copy of the environment's objectivity or the individual's psychic history. Guided by the latter, art is redeemed, makes the world into its instrument, and forges, beyond spatial and temporal prisons, a personal vision. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1068:To see a thing one has to comprehend it. An armchair presupposes the human body, its joints and limbs; a pair of scissors, the act of cutting. What can be said of a lamp or a car? The savage cannot comprehend the missionary’s Bible; the passenger does not see the same rigging as the sailors. If we really saw the world, maybe we would understand it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1069:Nowadays, one of the churches of Tlön maintains platonically that such and such a pain, such and such a greenish-yellow colour, such and such a temperature, such and such a sound, etc., make up the only reality there is. All men, in the climactic instant of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat one line of Shakespeare are William Shakespeare. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1070:O verbo ler, como o verbo amar e o verbo sonhar, não suporta o modo imperativo. Eu aconselho sempre os meus alunos que se um livro os aborrece o abandonem; que não o leiam porque é famoso, que não o leiam porque é moderno, que não o leiam porque é um clássico. A leitura deve ser uma das formas da felicidade e não se pode obrigar ninguém a ser feliz. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1071:If you sell, say, two thousand copies, it is the same thing as if you had sold nothing at all because two thousand is too vast—I mean, for the imagination to grasp. While thirty-seven people—perhaps thirty-seven are too many, perhaps seventeen would have been better or even seven—but still thirty-seven are still within the scope of one's imagination. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1072:Todo, en aquellos años, era distinto; hasta el sabor del sueño (yo, quizá, nunca fui plenamente feliz, pero es sabido que la desventura requiere paraísos perdidos.) No hay hombre que no aspire a la plentiud, es decir a la suma de experiencias de que un hombre es capaz. No hay hombre que no tema ser defraudado de alguna parte de ese patrimonio infinito. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1073:I write for myself, and perhaps for half a dozen friends. And that should be enough. And that might improve the quality of my writing. But if I were writing for thousands of people, then I would write what might please them. And as I know nothing about them, and maybe I'd have a rather low opinion of them, I don't think that would do any good to my work. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1074:Un gran libro como la Divina Comedia no es el aislado o azaroso capricho de un individuo; muchos hombres y muchas generaciones tendieron hacia él. Investigar sus precursores no es incurrir en una miserable tarea de carácter jurídico o policial; es indagar los movimientos, los tanteos, las aventuras, las vislumbres y las premoniciones del espíritu humano. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1075:Quando leggiamo versi davvero straordinari, davvero buoni, tendiamo a farlo ad alta voce. Un buon verso non si lascia leggere a bassa voce o in silenzio. Se ci riusciamo, non è un verso efficace: il verso esige di essere declamato. Il verso non dimentica di essere stato un’arte orale prima di essere un’arte scritta, non dimentica di essere stato un canto. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1076:(...) Un hombre se propone la tarea de dibujar el mundo. A lo largo de los años puebla un espacio con imágenes de provincias, de reinos, de montañas, de bahías, de naves, de islas, de peces, de habitaciones, de instrumentos, de astros, de caballos y de personas. Poco antes de morir, descubre que ese paciente laberinto de líneas traza la imagen de su cara. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1077:Berkeley affirmed the existence of personal identity, “I my self am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking active principle that perceives . . .” (Dialogues, 3); Hume, the skeptic, refutes this identity and makes of every man “a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity” (op. cit., I, 4, 6). ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1078:I cannot combine some characters
dhcmrlchtdj
which the divine Library has not foreseen and which in one of its secret tongues do not contain a terrible meaning. No one can articulate a syllable which is not filled with tenderness and fear, which is not, in one of these languages, the powerful name of a god. To speak is to fall into tautology. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1079:Se spune de obicei că nu există rând de oameni în care să nu se găsească și câțiva oameni drepți, care sprijină tainic lumea și o îndreptățesc în fața Domnului; (...) Dar unde să-i găsești, dacă sunt risipiți pe fața pământului și neștiuți, și nu se recunosc unii pe alții când se întâlnesc, și nici măcar ei înșiși nu știu ce menire înaltă au de îndeplinit? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1080:De todos los instrumentos del hombre, el más asombroso es, sin duda, el libro. Los demás son extensiones de su cuerpo. El microscopio, el telescopio, son extensiones de su vista; el teléfono es extensión de la voz; luego tenemos el arado y la espada, extensiones del brazo. Pero el libro es otra cosa: el libro es una extensión de la memoria y la imaginación. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1081:Adoctrinada por un ejercicio de siglos, le república de hombres inmortales había logrado la perfección de la tolerancia y casi del desdén. Sabía que en un plazo infinito le ocurren a todo hombre todas las cosas. Por sus pasadas o futuras virtudes, todo hombre es acreedor a toda bondad, pero también a toda traición, por sus infamias del pasado o del porvenir. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1082:Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that they will receive my every aid and support. I have even secretly longed to write, under a pen name, a merciless tirade against myself. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1083:Out of this city marched armies that seemed to be great, and afterwards were when glory had magnified them.
As the years went by, an occasional soldier returned, and with a foreign trace to his speech, told tales of what had happened to him in places called Ituzaingo or Ayacucho.
These things, now, are as if they had never been.
--"Martin Fierro ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1084:La imagen que un solo hombre puede formar es la que no toca a ninguno. Infinitas cosas hay en la tierra; cualquiera puede equipararse a cualquiera. Equiparar estrellas con hojas no es menos arbitrario que equipararlas con peces o con pájaros. En cambio, nadie no sintió nunca alguna vez que el destino es fuerte y es torpe, que es inocente y es también inhumano. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1085:There [DreamTigers by Jorge Luis Borges] were these little fablesque things, you know, dream tigers, beautiful, beautiful pieces that when you read them had the power of a long piece, but they were prose, and they had the power of poetry, in that the last line wasn't the end, it was a reverberation, like when you tap on a glass made of crystal, and it goes ping. ~ Sandra Cisneros, #NFDB
1086:In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of the others. In the almost unfathomable Ts'ui Pen, he chooses – simultaneously – all of them. He thus creates various futures, various times which start others that will in their turn branch out and bifurcate in other times. That is the cause of the contradictions in the novel. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1087:Quando um indivíduo cria algo, digamos, uma composição musical, um romance, uma pintura, um filme, um vídeo, esse indivíduo se torna um autor, quer dizer, alguém que é capaz de deixar marcas, traços de seu modo próprio de criar mensagens em um processo de signos com o qual lida. O autor é aquele que interfere de modo particular e pessoal em um processo de signos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1088:Vibrante en las espadas y en la pasión
y dormidas en la hiedra,
solo la vida existe.
El espacio y el tiempo son formas suyas,
son instrumentos mágicos del alma,
y cuando ésta se apague,
se apagarán con ella el espacio, el tiempo y la muerte,
como al cesar la luz
caduca el simulacro de los espejos." ('La recoleta', Luna de enfrente - 1925) ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1089:What one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men. For that reason a disobedience committed in a garden contaminates the human race; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew suffices to safe it. Perhaps Schopenhauer is right: I am all others, any men is all men, Shakespeare is in some way the wretched John Vincent Moon. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1090:It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books - setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them." (From the Introduction of 1941's The Garden of Forking Paths) ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1091:Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies — for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry — I say to myself, “What a pity I can’t buy that book, for I already have a copy at home. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1092:A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. 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, #NFDB
1093:A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. 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, #NFDB
1094:En aventuras de ésas, he prodigado y consumido mis años. No me parece inverosímil que en algún anaquel del universo haya un libro total; ruego a los dioses ignorados -¡uno solo, aunque sea, hace miles de años!- lo haya examinado y leído. Si el honor y la sabiduría y la felicidad no son para mí, que sean para otros. Que el cielo exista, aunque mi lugar sea el infierno. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1095:You will reply that reality hasn't the slightest need to be of interest. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not. In the hypothesis you have postulated, chance intervenes largely. Here lies a dead rabbi; I should prefer a purely rabbinical explanation; not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1096:It is generally understood that a modern-day book may honorably be based upon an older one, especially since, as Dr. Johnson observed, no man likes owing anything to his contemporaries. The repeated but irrelevant points of congruence between Joyce's Ulysses and Homer's Odyssey continue to attract (though I shall never understand why) the dazzled admiration of critics. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1097:Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies - for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry - I say to myself, "What a pity I can't buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1098:El verbo leer, como el verbo amar y el verbo soñar, no soporta “el modo imperativo”. Yo siempre les aconsejé a mis estudiantes que si un libro los aburre lo dejen; que no lo lean porque es famoso, que no lean un libro porque es moderno, que no lean un libro porque es antiguo. La lectura debe ser una de las formas de la felicidad y no se puede obligar a nadie a ser feliz ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1099:God made Himself totally a man but a man to the point of infamy, a man to the point of reprobation and the abyss. To save us, He could have chosen *any* of the destinies which make up the complex web of history; He could have been Alexander or Pythagoras or Rurik or Jesus; He chose the vilest destiny of all: He was Judas.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
1100:El verbo leer, como el verbo amar y el verbo soñar, no soporta ‘el modo imperativo’. Yo siempre les aconsejé a mis estudiantes que si un libro los aburre lo dejen; que no lo lean porque es famoso, que no lean un libro porque es moderno, que no lean un libro porque es antiguo. La lectura debe ser una de las formas de la felicidad y no se puede obligar a nadie a ser feliz”. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1101:Taught by centuries of
living, the republic of immortal men had
achieved a perfection of tolerance, almost of
disdain. They knew that over an infinitely long span of time, all things happen to all men. As
reward for his past and future virtues, every
man merited every kindness—yet also every
betrayal, as reward for his past and future
iniquities. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1102:I know very little of my own work by heart, because I don’t like what I write. In fact, I find myself personally expressed far better in the writings of other poets than in my own, because I know all my mistakes—I know all the chinks and all the padding, I know that a particular line is weak, and so on. I read other poets in a different way; I don’t look too closely at them. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1103:Lo que hace un hombre es como si lo hicieran todos los hombres. Por eso no es injusto que una desobediencia en un jardín contamine al género humano; por eso no es injusto que la crucifixión de un solo judío baste para salvarlo. Acaso Schopenhauer tiene razón: yo soy los otros, cualquier hombre es todos los hombres, Shakespeare es de algún modo el miserable John Vincent Moon. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1104:Of all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1105:Distance and antiquity (the emphases of space and time) pull on our hearts. If we are already sobered by the thought that men lived two thousand five hundred years ago, how could we not be moved to know that they made verses, were spectators of the world, that they sheltered in light, lasting words something of their ponderous, fleeting life, words that fulfill a long destiny? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1106:Entró. Ahí estaba el gato, dormido. Pidió una taza de café, la endulzó lentamente; la probó (ese placer le había sido vedado en la clínica) y pensó, mientras alisaba el negro pelaje, que aquel contacto era ilusorio y que estaban como separados por un cristal, porque el hombre vive en el tiempo, en la sucesión, y el mágico animal, en la actualidad, en la eternidad del instante. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1107:Of all man's instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1108:This has happened and will happen again,' said Euphorbus. 'You are not lighting a pyre, you are lighting a labyrinth of flames. If all the fires I have seen were gathered together here, they would not fit on earth and the angels would be blinded. I have said this many times.' Then he cried out, because the flames had reached him.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
1109:Todos los hechos pueden ocurrirle a un hombre, desde el instante de su nacimiento hasta el de su muerte, han sido prefijados por el. Asi, toda negligencia es deliberada, todo casual encuentro una cita, toda humillacion una penitencia, todo fracaso una misteriosa victoria, toda muerte un suicidio. No hay consuelo mas habil que el pensamiento de que hemos elegido nuestras desdichas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1110:I always imagine them at nightfall, in the dusk of a slum or a vacant lot, in that long, quiet moment when things are gradually left alone, with their backs to the sunset, and when colours are like memories or premonitions of other colours. We must not be too prodigal with our angels; they are the last divinities we harbour, and they might fly away.
From "A History of Angels ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1111:I think the first reading of a
poem is a true one, and after that we delude ourselves
into the belief that the sensation the impression, is repeated.
But, as I say, it may be mere loyalty,a mere trick of memory a mere confusion we once felt,thus it may be said that poetry is a new experience every time,every time I read a poem the experience happns to occur and that is poetry ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1112:Not a single star will be left in the night. The night will not be left. I will die and, with me, the weight of the intolerable universe. I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions, the continents and faces. I shall erase the accumulated past. I shall make dust of history, dust of dust. Now I am looking on the final sunset. I am hearing the last bird. I bequeath nothingness to no one. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1113:Por indecisión o por negligencia o por otras razones, no me casé, y ahora estoy solo. No me duele la soledad; bastante esfuerzo es tolerarse a uno mismo y a sus manías. Noto que estoy envejeciendo; un síntoma inequívoco es el hecho de que no me interesan o sorprenden las novedades, acaso porque advierto que nada esencialmente nuevo hay en ellas y que no pasan de ser tímidas variaciones ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1114:There will not be a star in the night.
There will be no night.
I will die and with me the sum
of the intolerable universe.
I will erase the pyramids, the medals,
continents and faces.
I will erase the accumulation of the past.
I will dust history, dust dust.
I'm looking at the last setting.
I hear the last bird.
Lego nothing to anyone.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The suicide
,#NFDB
1115:Get hold of a copy of Heine’s Buck der Lieder—that should be easily done—get hold of a German-English dictionary, and then begin to read. You may be puzzled at first, but after two or three months you will find yourself reading the finest poetry in the world and perhaps not understanding it but feeling it, which is far better, since poetry is not meant for reason but for the imagination. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1116:I always read the Latin American writers. I love so many of them: Gabriel García Márquez, José Donoso, Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Luis Borges, Clarice Lispector. I also love a lot of American experimental writers and surrealist European writers. But perhaps The Persian Book of Kings was the greatest influence - I encourage people to look at it. There is such a wealth of incredible stories. ~ Porochista Khakpour, #NFDB
1117:Pensar, analizar, inventar no son actos anómalos, son la normal respiración de la inteligencia. Glorificar el ocasional cumplimiento de esa función, atesorar antiguos y ajenos pensamientos, recordar con incrédulo estupor lo que el doctor universalis pensó, es confesar nuestra languidez o nuestra barbarie. Todo hombre debe ser capaz de todas las ideas y entiendo que en el porvenir lo será. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1118:The great American writer Herman Melville says somewhere in The White Whale that a man ought to be 'a patriot to heaven,' and I believe it is a good thing, this ambition to be a cosmopolitan, this idea to be citizens not of a small parcel of the world that changes according to the currents of politics, according to the wars, to what occurs, but to feel that the whole world is our country. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1119:Emma dropped the paper. Her first impression was of a weak feeling in her stomach and in her knees; then of blind guilt, of unreality, of coldness, of fear; then she wished that it were already the next day. Immediately afterwards she realized that that wish was futile because the death of her father was the only thing that had happened in the world, and it would go on happening endlessly. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1120:Of all the books I have delivered to the presses, none, I think, is as personal as the straggling collection mustered for this hodgepodge, precisely because it abounds in reflections and interpolations.
Few things have happened to me, and I have read a great many. Or rather, few things have happened to me more worth remembering than Schopenhauer's thought or the music of England's words. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1121:In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of the others. In the almost unfathomable Ts'ui Pen, he chooses - simultaneously - all of them. He thus creates various futures, various times which start others that will in their turn branch out and bifurcate in other times. That is the cause of the contradictions in the novel." ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths, #NFDB
1122:Things duplicate themselves in Tlön; they also tend to grow vague or ‘sketchy,’ and to lose detail when they begin to be forgotten. The classic example is the doorway that continued to exist so long as a certain beggar frequented it, but which was lost to sight when he died. Sometimes a few birds, a horse, have saved the ruins of an amphitheater.' - Jorge Luis Borges, 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1123:Emma dropped the letter. The first thing she felt was a sinking in her stomach and a trembling in her knees; then, a sense of blind guilt, of unreality, of cold, of fear; then, a desire for this day to be past. Then immediately she realized that such a wish was pointless, for her father's death was the only thing that had happened in the world, and it would go on happening, endlessly, forever after. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1124:The man who has learned that three plus one are four doesn't have to go through a proof of that assertion with coins, or dice, or chess pieces, or pencils. He knows it, and that's that. He cannot conceive a different sum. There are mathematicians who say that three plus one is a tautology for four, a different way of saying "four" ... If three plus one can be two, or fourteen, then reason is madness. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1125:There are official searchers, inquisitors. I have seen them in the performance of their function: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they speak of a broken stairway which almost killed them; they talk with the librarian of galleries and stairs; sometimes they pick up the nearest volume and leaf through it, looking for infamous words. Obviously, no one expects to discover anything. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1126:At the beginning of their careers many writers have a need to overwrite. They choose carefully turned-out phrases; they want to impress their readers with their large vocabularies. By the excesses of their language, these young men and women try to hide their sense of inexperience. With maturity the writer becomes more secure in his ideas. He finds his real tone and develops a simple and effective style. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1127:Augustine had written that Jesus is the straight path that saves us from the circular labyrinth followed by the impious; these Aurelian, laboriously trivial, compared with Ixion, with the liver of Prometheus, with Sisyphus, with the king of Thebes who saw two suns, with stuttering, with parrots, with mirrors, with echoes, with the mules of a noria and with two-horned syllogisms. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labryinths, The Theologians, #NFDB
1128:Everything that happens, including humiliations, embarrassments, misfortunes, all has been given like clay, like material for one’s art. One must accept it. For this reason I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliations, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1129:We have inhabited both the actual and the imaginary realms for a long time. But we don't live in either place the way our parents or ancestors did. Enchantment alters with age, and with the age. We know a dozen Arthurs now, all of them true. The Shire changed irrevocably even in Bilbo's lifetime. Don Quixote went riding out to Argentina and met Jorge Luis Borges there. Plus c'est la même chose, plus ça change. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1130:Tek bir insanın yaptığı, sanki bütün insanlar tarafından yapılmış gibidir. Bu nedenle cennet bahçesindeki söz dinlemezliğin bütün insanlığı kirletmesi haksızlık sayılmaz; gene bu nedenle tek bir Yahudi'nin çarmıha gerilmesinin insanlığı kurtarmaya yetmesi de haksızlık sayılmaz. Belki de Schopenhauer haklıydı; ben başkalarıyım, her insan bütün insanlardır. Shakespeare de neredeyse, zavallı John Vincent Moon'dur. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1131:We have inhabited both the actual and the imaginary realms for a long time. But we don't live in either place the way our parents or ancestors did. Enchantment alters with age, and with the age.
We know a dozen Arthurs now, all of them true. The Shire changed irrevocably even in Bilbo's lifetime. Don Quixote went riding out to Argentina and met Jorge Luis Borges there. Plus c'est la même chose, plus ça change. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,#NFDB
1132:There is a line in Verlaine I shall not recall again,
There is a street close by forbidden to my feet,
There's a mirror that's seen me for the very last time,
There is a door that I have locked till the end of the world.
Among the books in my library (I have them before me)
There are some that I shall never open now.
This summer I complete my fiftieth year;
Death is gnawing at me ceaselessly. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1133:Vi a engrenagem do amor e a modificação da morte, vi o Aleph, de todos os pontos, vi no Aleph a terra, e na terra outra vez o Aleph, e no Aleph a terra, vi meu rosto e minhas vísceras, vi teu rosto e senti vertigem e chorei, porque meus olhos haviam visto esse objeto secreto e conjetural cujo nome usurpam os homens, mas que nenhum homem olhou: o inconcebível universo.
Senti infinita veneração, infinita lástima. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1134:...medité en ese laberinto perdido: lo imaginé inviolado y perfecto en la cumbre secreta de una montaña, lo imaginé borrado por arrozales o debajo del agua, lo imaginé infinito, no ya de quioscos ochavados y de sendas que vuelven, sino de ríos y provincias y reinos... Pensé en un laberinto de laberintos, en un sinuoso laberinto creciente que abarca el pasado y el porvenir y que implicara de algún modo a los astros. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1135:List of Artists Who Created Fantasy Worlds to Try and Cure Bouts of Sadness
1. Italo Calvino
2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. Jim Henson and Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths
4. The creator of MySpace
5. Richard Brautigan
6. J.K. Rowling
7. The inventor of the children's toy Lite-Brite
8. Ann Sexton
9. David Foster Wallace
10. Gaugin and the Caribbean
11. Charles Schulz
12. Liam Rector ~ Shane Jones,#NFDB
1136:Mis libros (que no saben que yo existo)
Son tan parte de mí como este rostro
De sienes grises y de grises ojos
Que vanamente busco en los cristales
Y que recorro con la mano cóncava.
No sin alguna lógica amargura
Pienso que las palabras esenciales
Que me expresan están en esas hojas
Que no saben quién soy, no en las que he escrito.
Mejor así. Las voces de los muertos
Me dirán para siempre. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1137:There are systems upon systems that are incredible but possessed of a pleasing architecture or a certain agreeable sensationalism. The metaphysicians of Tlön seek not truth, or even plausibility - they seek to amaze, astound. In their view, metaphysics is a branch of the literature of fantasy. They know a system is naught but the subordination of all the aspects of the universe to one of those aspects - any one of them. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1138:discovered a classification Jorge Luis Borges devised, claiming that A certain Chinese encyclopedia divides animals into: a. Belonging to the Emperor b. Embalmed c. Tame d. Sucking pigs e. Sirens f. Fabulous g. Stray dogs h. Included in the present classification i. Frenzied j. Innumerable k. Drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush l. Et cetera m. Having just broken the water pitcher n. That from a long way off look like flies. ~ Sue Hubbell, #NFDB
1139:Bashkëfajtori"
Me kryqëzojnë dhe dua te jem kryqi dhe gozhdët.
Me zgjatin kupën dhe dua te jem helmi.
Me mashtrojne dhe dua të jem gënjeshtra.
Me djegin dhe dua te jem ferri.
Dua t'i bëj homazh e të falenderoj cdo grimce kohë.
Shujta ime është e çdo gjë
Pesha e saktë e universit,poshtërimit,gëzimi.
Dua të përligj ate që plagë më jep.
Pak rëndësi kanë lumturia a fatkeqësia ime.
Unë jam poet. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1140:Y el azar, salvo que no hay azar, salvo que lo que llamamos azar es nuestra ignorancia de la compleja maquinaria de la causalidad, el azar me hizo encontrar tres pequeños volúmenes. Yo he debido traer uno como talismán ahora. Tres pequeños en la librería Mitchel que corresponden a tantos recuerdos míos, y esos tres pequeños volúmenes eran los tres tomos de "Infierno", el "Purgatorio" y el "Paraíso", vertidos al inglés [...] ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1141:I had no wish to take any determined route on that stroll; I attempted, rather, a maximum latitude of probabilities in order not to wear out expectation with an obligatory anticipation of a single one of them. I was able, within the imperfect limits of possibility, to walk, as they say, at random. I accepted, without any conscious prejudice but that of avoiding the wider avenues and streets, the most obscure invitations of chance. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1142:Sleepless, obsessed, almost joyful, I reflected on how nothing is less material than money, insamuch as any coin whatsoever (a twenty-centavo piece, let us say) is, strictly speaking, a repertory of possible futures. Money is abstract, I repeated, money is future time. It can be an evening in the suburbs, it can be the music of Brahms, it can be chess, it can be coffee, it can be the words of Epictetus teaching us to despise gold. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1143:VIAŢA MEA ÎNTREAGĂ
Am stăruit în apropierea fericirii şi în măruntaiele suferinţei.
Am văzut un cartier nesfârşit unde se împlineşte o nesătulă nemurire de asfinţituri.
Am savurat multe cuvinte.
Am convingerea nestrămutată că asta e tot şi că nu voi mai vedea şi nici nu voi mai săvârşi lucruri noi.
Cred că zilele mele sunt egale în sărăcie şi în bogăţie cu cele ale lui Dumnezeu şi cu cele ale tutuuror oamenilor. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1144:La candente mañana de febrero en que Beatriz Viterbo murió, después de una imperiosa agonía
que no se rebajó un solo instante ni al sentimentalismo ni al miedo, noté que las carteleras de
fierro de la Plaza Constitución habían renovado no sé qué aviso de cigarrillos rubios; el hecho
me dolió, pues comprendí que el incesante y vasto universo ya se apartaba de ella y que ese
cambio era el primero de una serie infinita. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1145:Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this; I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do - when one has found one's natural voice, one's rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1146:I pray to the unknown gods that some man-even a single man, tens of centuries ago-has perused and read that book. If the honor and wisdom and joy of such a reading are not to be my own, then let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my own place be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, #NFDB
1147: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, #NFDB
1148:Sé que he perdido tantas cosas que no podría contarlas y que esas perdiciones, ahora, son lo que es mío. Sé que he perdido el amarillo y el negro y pienso en esos imposibles colores como no piensan los que ven. Mi padre ha muerto y está siempre a mi lado. (…) Nuestras son las mujeres que nos dejaron, ya no sujetos a la víspera, que es zozobra, y a las alarmas y terrores de la esperanza. No hay otros paraísos que los paraísos perdidos». ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1149:The Suicide
Not a single star will be left in the night.
The night will not be left.
I will die and, with me,
the weight of the intolerable universe.
I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions,
the continents and faces.
I shall erase the accumulated past.
I shall make dust of history, dust of dust.
Now I am looking on the final sunset.
I am hearing the last bird.
I bequeath nothingness to no one. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1150:Whoever has seen the universe, whoever has beheld the fiery designs of the universe, cannot think in terms of one man, of that man’s trivial fortunes or misfortunes, though he be that very man. That man has been he and now matters no more to him. What is the life of that other to him, the nation of that other to him, if he, now, is no one? This is why I do not pronounce the formula, why, lying here in the darkness, I let the days obliterate me. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1151:The curious thing about The Ring and the Book, to which I will now return, is that although each character recounts the same events, and although there is no difference in what they tell, there is a fundamental difference, which belongs to the realm of human psychology, the fact that each of us believes we are justified. For example, the count admits he is a murderer, but the word “murderer” is too general. We know this from reading other books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1152:Esa trama de tiempos que se aproximan, se bifurcan, se cortan o que secularmente se ignoran, abarca todas la posibilidades. No existimos en la mayoría de esos tiempos; en algunos existe usted y no yo; en otros, yo, no usted; en otros, los dos. En éste, que un favorable azar me depara, usted ha llegado a mi casa; en otro, usted, al atravesar el jardín, me ha encontrado muerto; en otro, yo digo estas mismas palabras, pero soy un error, un fantasma. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1153:And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I dream.
Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; now that I have unlimited power, I am going to create a tiger.
Oh incompetence! Never do my dreams engender the wild beast I longed for.
The tiger indeed appears, but stuffed or flimsy, or with impure variations of shape, or of an implausible size, or all too fleeting, or with a touch of the dog or bird. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1154:La muchacha habló como si estuviera sola y de algún modo yo sentí que no podía pensar en otra cosa y que esa cosa era lo único que le había pasado en la vida.
(...)
Los años pasan y son tantas las veces que he contado la historia que ya no sé si la recuerdo de veras o si sólo recuerdo las palabras con que la cuento. Tal vez lo mismo le paso a la Cautiva con su malón, Ahora lo mismo da que fuera yo o que fuera otro el que vio matar a Moreira. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1155:In an isolated region from Iran there is this wall tower, windowless, doorless, not very tall. In its only room with arched walls and the stamped earth as its floor, there’s a wooden table and a bench. In this round cell a man that looks like me is writing in signs that i don’t understand a long poem about a man who in another round cell is writing a poem about a man in another round cell. Endless series; nobody will ever read what prisoners write. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1156:...perhaps the intentions of the poet are not that important. What is important nowadays is that although Homer might have thought he was telling that story, he was actually telling something far finer: the story of a man, a hero, who is attacking a city he knows he will never conquer, who knows he will die before it falls; and the still more stirring tale of men defending a city whose doom is already known to them, a city that is already in flames. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1157:L'incandescente mattina di febbraio in cui Beatriz Viterbo morì, dopo un'imperiosa agonia che non si abbassò un solo istante al sentimentalismo né al timore, notai che le armature di ferro di plaza Constitución avevano cambiato non so quale pubblicità di sigarette; il fatto mi dispiacque, perché compresi che l'incessante e vasto universo già si separava da lei e che quel mutamento era il primo di una serie infinita. - incipit del racconto L'Aleph. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1158:I think of myself primarily as a reader, then also a writer, but that's more or less irrelevant. I think I'm a good reader, I'm a good reader in many languages, especially in English, since poetry came to me through the English language, initially through my father's love of Swinburn, of Tennyson, and also of Keats, Shelley and so on - not through my native tongue, not through Spanish. It came to me as a kind of spell. I didn't understand it, but I felt it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1159:Tennyson said that if we could understand a single flower we would know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he meant that there is no deed, however so humble, which does not implicate universal history and the infinite concatenation of causes and effects. Perhaps he meant that the visible world is implicit, in its entirety, in each manifestation, just as, in the same way, will, according to Schopenhauer, is implicit, in its entirety, in each individual. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1160:The library will endure; it is the universe. As for us, everything has not been written; we are not turning into phantoms. We walk the corridors, searching the shelves and rearranging them, looking for lines of meaning amid leagues of cacophony and incoherence, reading the history of the past and our future, collecting our thoughts and collecting the thoughts of others, and every so often glimpsing mirrors, in which we may recognize creatures of the information. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1161:As I think of the many myths, there is one that is very harmful, and that is the myth of countries. I mean, why should I think of myself as being an Argentine, and not a Chilean, and not an Uruguayan.
I don't know really.
All of those myths that we impose on ourselves — and they make for hatred, for war, for enmity — are very harmful.
Well, I suppose in the long run, governments and countries will die out and we'll be just, well, cosmopolitans. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1162:En un alba sin pájaros el mago vio cernirse contra los muros el incendio concéntrico. Por un instante, pensó refugiarse en las aguas, pero luego comprendió que la muerte venía a coronar su vejez, y a absolverlo de sus trabajos. Caminó contra los jirones de fuego. Estos no mordieron su carne, éstos lo acariciaron y lo inundaron sin calor y sin combustión. Con alivio, con humillación, con terror, comprendió que él también era una apariencia, que otro estaba soñándolo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1163:Os meus livros
Os meus livros (que não sabem que existo)
São uma parte de mim, como este rosto
De têmporas e olhos já cinzentos
Que em vão vou procurando nos espelhos
E que percorro com a minha mão côncava.
Não sem alguma lógica amargura
Entendo que as palavras essenciais,
As que me exprimem, estarão nessas folhas
Que não sabem quem sou, não nas que escrevo.
Mais vale assim. As vozes desses mortos
Dir-me-ão para sempre. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1164:Wenn er hundert Jahre alt ist, kann der einzelne auf Liebe und Freundschaft verzichten. Leiden und ungewollter Tod bedeuten für ihn keine Drohung. Er übt sich in einer Kunst, der Philosophie, der Mathematik oder spielt gegen sich selber Schach. Wenn er will bringt er sich um. als Herr seines Lebens ist der Mensch auch Herr seines Todes."
"Handelt es sich um ein Zitat?" fragte ich.
"Gewiß doch. Uns bleiben nur noch Zitate. Die Sprache ist ein System von Zitaten. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1165:The three of them knew it. She was Kafka’s mistress. Kafka had dreamt her. The three of them knew it. He was Kafka’s friend. Kafka had dreamt him. The three of them knew it. The woman said to the friend, Tonight I want you to have me. The three of them knew it. The man replied: If we sin, Kafka will stop dreaming us. One of them knew it. There was no longer anyone on earth. Kafka said to himself Now the two of them have gone, I’m left alone. I’ll stop dreaming myself. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1166:The three of them knew it. She was Kafka's mistress. Kafka had dreamt her. The three of them knew it. He was Kafka's friend. Kafka had dreamt him. The three of them knew it. The woman said to the friend, Tonight I want you to have me. The three of them knew it. The man replied: If we sin, Kafka will stop dreaming us. One of them knew it. There was no longer anyone on earth. Kafka said to himself Now the two of them have gone, I'm left alone. I'll stop dreaming myself. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1167:Como todos los hombres de la Biblioteca, he viajado en mi juventud; he peregrinado en busca de un libro, acaso del catálogo de catálogos; ahora que mis ojos casi no pueden descifrar lo que escribo, me preparo a morir a unas pocas leguas del hexágono en que nací. Muerto, no faltarán manos piadosas que me tiren por la baranda; mi sepultura será el aire insondable; mi cuerpo se hundirá largamente y se corromperá y disolverá en el viento engendrado por la caída, que es infinita. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1168:Ensayé diversas explicaciones; no me bastó ninguna. Pensé: Me satisface la derrota, porque secretamente me sé culpable y sólo puede redimirme el castigo. Pensé: Me satisface la derrota, porque es un fin y yo estoy muy cansado. Pensé: Me satisface la derrota, porque ha ocurrido, porque está innumerablemente unida todos los hechos que son, que fueron, que serán, porque censurar o deplorar un solo hecho real es blasfemar del universo. Esas razones ensayé, hasta dar con la verdadera ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1169:A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. 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, Twenty Conversations with Borges, Including a Selection of Poems : Interviews by Roberto Alifano, 1981–1983 (1984)., #NFDB
1170:In this night too, in this night of his mortal eyes into which he was now descending, love and danger were again waiting...
a murmur of glory and hexameters, of men defending a temple the gods will not save, and of black vessels searching the sea for a beloved isle;
the murmor of the Odysseys and Iliads it was his destiny to sing and leave echoing concavely in the memory of man.
These things we know, but not those he felt descending into the last shade of all. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1171:On February 14, I received a telegram from Buenos Aires urging me to return home immediately; my father was "not at all well." God forgive me, but the prestige of being the recipient of an urgent telegram, the desire to communicate to all of Fray Bentos the contradiction between the negative form of the news and the absoluteness of the adverbial phrase, the temptation to dramatize my grief by feigning a virile stoicism-all this perhaps distracted me from any possibility of real pain. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1172:Deeds which populate the dimensions of space and which reach their end when someone dies may cause us wonderment, but one thing, or an infinite number of things, dies in every final agony, unless there is a universal memory as the theosophists have conjectured. In time there was a day that extinguished the last eyes to see Christ; the battle of Junín and the
love of Helen died with the death of a man. What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose? ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1173:Que muera conmigo el misterio que está escrito en los tigres. Quien ha entrevisto el universo, quien ha entrevisto los ardientes designios del universo, no puede pensar en un hombre, en sus triviales dichas o desventuras, aunque ese hombre sea él. Ese hombre ha sido él, y ahora no le importa. Qué le importa la suerte de aquel otro, qué le importa la nación de aquel otro, si él, ahora, es nadie. Por eso no pronuncio la fórmula, por eso dejo que me olviden los días, acostado en la oscuridad. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1174:In literary practices the idea of a single subject is also all-powerful. It is uncommon for books to be signed. The concept of plagiarism does not exist: it has been established that all works are the creation of one author, who is atemporal and anonymous. The critics often invent authors: they select two dissimilar works - the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say - attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1175:Whoever has seen the universe, whoever has beheld the fiery designs of the universe, cannot think in terms of one man, of that man's trivial fortunes or misfortunes, though he be that very man. That man has been he and now matters no more to him. What is the life of that other to him, the nation of that other to him, if he, now, is no one? This is why I do not pronounce the formula, why, lying here in the darkness, I let the days obliterate me.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
1176:To think, analyze and invent, he [Pierre Menard] also wrote me, “are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence. To glorify the occasional fulfillment of this function, to treasure ancient thoughts of others, to remember with incredulous amazement that the doctor universal is thought, is to confess our languor or barbarism. Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe that in the future he will be." (Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote, 1939) ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1177:No hay ejercicio intelectual que no sea finalmente inútil. Una doctrina filosófica es al principio una descripción verosímil del universo; giran los años y es un mero capítulo -cuando no un párrafo o un nombre- de la historia de la filosofía. En la literatura, esa caducidad final es aun más notoria. El Quijote -me dijo Menard -fue ante todo un libro agradable; ahora es una ocasión de brindis patrióticos, de soberbia gramatical, de obscenas ediciones de lujo. La gloria es una incomprensión y quizá la peor. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1178:Tennyson said that if we could understand a single flower we would know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he meant that there is no deed, however so humble, which does not implicate universal history and the infinite concatenation of causes and effects. Perhaps he meant that the visible world is implicit, in its entirety, in each manifestation, just as, in the same way, will, according to Schopenhauer, is implicit, in its entirety, in each individual.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
1179:And yet, and yet… Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical universe, are apparent desperations and secret consolations. Our destiny … is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and iron-clad. Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1180:Ferrari: How odd, Borges, it seems that we are talking constantly through memory. Sometimes, our conversations remind me of a dialogue between two memories.
Borges: In fact, that’s what it is. If we are something, we are our past, aren’t we? Our past is not what can be recorded in a biography or in the newspapers. Our past is our memory. That memory can be hidden or inaccurate—it doesn’t matter. It’s there, isn’t it? It can be a lie but that lie becomes part of our memory, part of us. (Conversations, Vol. 1) ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1181:I imagined a labyrinth of labyrinths, a maze of mazes, a twisting, turning, ever-widening labyrinth that contained both past and future and somehow implied the stars. Absorbed in those illusory imaginings, I forgot that I was a pursued man; I felt myself, for an indefinite while, the abstract perceiver of the world. The vague, living countryside, the moon, the remains of the day did their work in me; so did the gently downward road, which forestalled all possibility of weariness. The evening was near, yet infinite. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1182:Hace diez años bastaba cualquier simetría con apariencia de orden-el materialismo dialéctico, el antisemitismo, el nazismo- para embelesar a las hombres. ¿Cómo no someterse a Tlön, a la minuciosa y vasta evidencia de un planeta ordenado? Inútil responder que la realidad también está ordenada. QUizá lo esté, pero de acuerod a leyes divinas-traduzco: a leyes inhumanas- que no acabamos nunca de percibir. Tlön será un laberinto, pero es un laberinto urdido por hombres, un laberinto destinado a que lo descifren los hombres. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1183:Afrontaba con verdadero temor (quizá con verdadero coraje) esas ejecuciones imaginarias; cada simulacro duraba unos pocos segundos; cerrado el círculo, Jaromir interminablemente volvía a las trémulas vísperas de su muerte. Luego reflexionó que la realidad no suele coincidir con las previsiones; con lógica perversa infirió que prever un detalle circunstancial es impedir que éste suceda. Fiel a esa débil magia, inventaba, para que no sucedieran, rasgos atroces; naturalmente, acabó por temer que esos rasgos fueran proféticos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1184:Sin lástima y sin ira el tiempo mella
Las heroicas espadas. Pobre y triste
A tu patria nostálgica volviste,
Oh capitán, para morir en ella
Y con ella. En el mágico desierto
La flor de Portugal se había perdido
Y el áspero español, antes vencido,
Amenazaba su costado abierto.
Quiero saber si aquende la ribera
Última comprendiste humildemente
Que todo lo perdido, el Occidente
Y el Oriente, el acero y la bandera,
Perduraría (ajeno a toda humana
Mutación) en tu Eneida lusitana. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1185:Las palabras son símbolos que postulan una memoria compartida. La que ahora quiero historiar es mía solamente; quienes la compartieron han muerto. Los místicos invocan una rosa, un beso, un pájaro que es todos los pájaros, un sol que es todas las estrellas y el sol, un cántaro de vino, un jardín o el acto sexual. De esas metáforas ninguna me sirve para esa larga noche de júbilo, que nos dejó, cansados y felices, en los linderos de la aurora. Casi no hablamos, mientras las ruedas y los cascos retumbaban sobre las piedras. (...) ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1186:Nada hay menos material que el dinero, ya que cualquier moneda (una moneda de veinte centavos, digamos) es, en rigor, un repertorio de futuros posibles. El dinero es abstracto, repetí, el dinero es tiempo futuro. Puede ser una tarde en las afueras, puede ser música de Brahms, puede ser mapas, puede ser ajedrez, puede ser café, puede ser las palabras de Epicteto, que enseñan el desprecio del oro; es un Proteo más versátil que el de la isla de Pharos. Es tiempo imprevisible, tiempo de Bergson, no duro tiempo del Islam o de Pórtico ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1187:On those remote pages [of 'a certain Chinese encyclopedia'] it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f ) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1188:...vidi i resti atroci di quanto deliziosamente era stata Beatriz Viterbo, vidi la circolazione del mio oscuro sangue, vidi il meccanismo dell'amore e la modificazione della morte, vidi l'Aleph, da tutti i punti, vidi nell'Aleph la terra, e nella terra di nuovo l'Aleph e nell'Aleph la terra, vidi il mio volto e le mie viscere, vidi il tuo volto e provai vertigine e piansi, perché i miei occhi avevano visto l'oggetto segreto e supposto, il cui nome usurpavano gli uomini, ma che nessun uomo ha contemplato: l'inconcepibile universo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1189:El hijo viejo, el hombre sin historia,
El huérfano que pudo ser el muerto,
Agota en vano el caserón desierto.
(Fue de los dos y es hoy de la memoria.
Es de los dos.) Bajo la dura suerte
Busca perdido el hombre doloroso
La voz que fue su voz. Lo milagroso
No sería más raro que la muerte.
Lo acosarán interminablemente
Los recuerdos sagrados y triviales
Que son nuestro destino, esas mortales
Memorias vastas como un continente.
Dios o Tal Vez o Nadie, yo te pido
Su inagotable imagen, no el olvido. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1190:A Whitman által jól ismert és feudálisnak nevezett klasszikus modellekben mindig van egy központi hős — Akhilleusz, Odüsszeusz, Aeneas, Roland, Cid, Siegfried, Krisztus –, aki fölébe magasodik a neki alávetett összes többi embernek. Ez a kiváltság, gondolta Whitman, egy olyan világ tartozéka, amelyet már túlhaladtunk, vagy legalábbis szeretnénk túlhaladni: az arisztokrácia világáé. Az én hőskölteményem nem lehet ilyen: összetettebbnek kell lennie, kifejezve vagy feltételezve minden ember teljes, semmihez sem hasonlítható egyenlőségét. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1191:I forgot to say—a merely curious detail—that in one of the first chapters of Sartor Resartus, when speaking about garments, Carlyle says that the simplest garment he knows of was used by the cavalry of Bolivar in the South American war. And here we have a description of the poncho as “a blanket with a hole in the middle,” under which he imagines Bolivar’s cavalry soldier, he imagines him—simplifying it a bit—“mother naked,” as naked as when he came out of his mother’s belly, covered by the poncho, with only his sword and his spear.”25 ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1192:They tell me that the present, the "specious present" of the psychologists, lasts from between several seconds and the smallest fraction of a second: such is the length of the history of the universe. Or better, there is no such thing as "the life of a man," nor even "one night in his life." Each moment we live exists, not the imaginary combination of these moments. The universe, the sum total of all events, is a collection no less ideal than the sum of all the horses of which Shakespeare dreamt—one, many, none?—between 1592 and 1594. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1193:Afterglow"
Sunset is always disturbing
whether theatrical or muted,
but still more disturbing
is that last desperate glow
that turns the plain to rust
when on the horizon nothing is left
of the pomp and clamor of the setting sun.
How hard holding on to that light, so tautly drawn
and different,
that hallucination which the human fear of the dark
imposes on space
and which ceases at once
the moment we realize its falsity,
the way a dream is broken
the moment the sleeper knows he is dreaming. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1194:En el primer volumen de Panerga und Paralipomena releí que todos los hechos que pueden ocurrirle a un hombre, desde el instante de su nacimiento hasta el de su muerte, han sido prefijados para él. Así, toda negligencia es deliberada, todo casual encuentro una cita, toda humillación una penitencia, todo fracaso una misteriosa victoria, toda muerte un suicidio. No hay consuelo más hábil que el pensamiento de que hemos elegido nuestras desdichas; esa teleología individual nos revela un orden secreto y prodigiosamente nos confunde con la divinidad. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1195:Tomorrow, in the fields of my kingdom, may you have a happy battle.
May your kingly hands be terrible in weaving the sword stuff.
May those opposing your sword become meat for the red swan.
May your many gods glut you with glory, may they glut you with blood.
Victorious may you be in the dawn, king who treads on Ireland.
Of your many days may none shine bright as tomorrow.
Because that day will be the last. I swear it to you, King Magnus.
For before its light is blotted, I shall vanquish you and blot you out, Magnus Barfod. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1196:In via Belgrano presi un tassì; insonne, invasato, quasi felice, pensai che nulla è meno materiale del denaro, giacché qualsiasi momenta (una moneta da venti centesimi, ad esempio) è, a rigore, un repertorio di futuri possibili. Il denaro è un ente astratto, ripetei, è tempo futuro. Può essere un pomeriggio in campagna, può essere musica di Brahms, può essere carte geografiche, può essere giuoco di scacchi, può essere caffé, può essere le parole di Epitteto, che insegnano il disprezzo dell'oro; è un Proteo più versatile di quello dell'isola Pharos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1197:Mil trescientos años y el mar median entre el destino de la cautiva y el destino de Droctulft. Los dos, ahora, son igualmente irrecuperables. La figura del bárbaro que abraza la causa de Ravena, la figura de la mujer europea que opta por el desierto, pueden parecer antagónicos. Sin embargo, a los dos los arrebató un ímpetu secreto, un ímpetu más hondo que la razón, y los dos acataron ese ímpetu que no hubieran sabido justificar. Acaso las historias que he referido son una sola historia. El anverso y el reverso de esta moneda son, para Dios, iguales. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1198:Nada o muy poco sé de mis mayores
portugueses, los Borges: vaga gente
que prosigue en mi carne, oscuramente,
sus hábitos, rigores y temores.
Tenues como si nunca hubieran sido
y ajenos a los trámites del arte,
indescifrablemente forman parte
del tiempo, de la tierra y del olvido.
Mejor así. Cumplida la faena,
son Portugal, son la famosa gente
que forzó las murallas del Oriente
y se dio al mar y al otro mar de arena.
Son el rey que en el místico desierto
se perdió y el que jura que no ha muerto. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1199:As coisas
A bengala, as modeas, o chaveiro,
A dócil fechadura, as tardias
Notas que não lerão os poucos dias
Que me restam, os naipes e o tabuleiro,
Um livro e em suas páginas a desvanecida
Violeta, monumento de uma tarde
Sem dúvida inesquecível e já esquecida,
O rubo espelho ocidental em que arde
Uma ilusória aurora. Quantas coisas,
Limas, umbrais, atlas, taças, cravos,
Servem-nos, como tácitos escravos, cegas e estranhamente sigilosas!
Durarão para além de nosso esquecimento
Nunca saberão que partimos em um momento. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1200:And yet, and yet... Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical universe, are apparent desperations and secret consolations. Our destiny ... is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and iron-clad. Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
1201:Mirrors are not more silent
nor the creeping dawn more secretive;
in the moonlight, you are that panther
we catch sight of from afar.
By the inexplicable workings of a divine law,
we look for you in vain;
More remote, even, than the Ganges or the setting sun,
yours is the solitude, yours the secret.
Your haunch allows the lingering
caress of my hand. You have accepted,
since that long forgotten past,
the love of the distrustful hand.
You belong to another time. You are lord
of a place bounded like a dream.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, To a Cat
,#NFDB
1202:The 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 livre,” everything ends up in a book. The Greeks speak of generations that will sing; Mallarmé speaks of an object, of a thing among things, a book. But the idea is the same; the idea that we are made for art, we are made for memory, we are made for poetry, or perhaps we are made for oblivion. But something remains, and that something is history or poetry, which are not essentially different. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1203:What is longevity? It is the horror of existing in a human body whose faculties are in decline. It is insomnia measured by decades and not by metal hands. It is carrying the weight of seas and pyramids, of ancient libraries and dynasties, of the dawns that Adam saw. It is being well aware that I am bound to my flesh, to a voice I detest, to my name, to routinely remembering, to Castilian, over which I have no control, to feeling nostalgic for the Latin I do not know. It is trying to sink into death and being unable to sink into death. It is being and continuing to be. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1204:In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendor. Judas elected those offenses unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence (John 12:6) and informing. He labored with gigantic humility; he thought himself unworthy to be good. Paul has written: Whoever glorifieth himself, let him glorify himself in God (I Corinthians 1:31); Judas sought Hell because the felicity of the Lord sufficed him. He thought that happiness, like good, is a divine attribute and not to be usurped by men. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1205: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. For this reason I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1206:Infidels claim that the rule in the Library is not "sense;' but "non-sense;'
and that "rationality " (even humble, pure coherence) is an almost miraculous
exception. They speak, I know, of "the feverish Library, whose random
volumes constantly threaten to transmogrify into others, so that they affirm
all things, deny all things, and confound and confuse all things, like some
mad and hallucinating deity." Those words, which not only proclaim disorder
but exemplify it as well, prove, as all can see, the infidels' deplorable taste
and desperate ignorance. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1207:As to whether a poem has been written by a great poet or not, this is important only to historians of literature. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that I have written a beautiful line; let us take this as a working hypothesis. Once I have written it, that line
does me no good, because, as I’ve already said, that line came to me from the Holy Ghost, from the subliminal self, or perhaps from some other writer. I often find I am merely quoting something I read some time ago, and then that becomes a rediscovering. Perhaps it is better that a poet should be nameless. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1208:Funes discerneva continuamente il calmo progredire della corruzione, della carie, della fatica. Notava i progressi della morte, dell’umidità. Era il solitario e lucido spettatore d’un mondo multiforme, istantaneo e quasi intollerabilmente preciso. Babilonia, Londra e New York hanno offuscato col loro feroce splendore l’immaginazione degli uomini; nessuno, nelle loro torri popolose e nelle loro strade febbrili, ha mai sentito il calore e la pressione d’una realtà così intangibile come quella che giorno e notte convergeva sul felice Ireneo, nel suo povero sobborgo sudamericano. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1209:his short story “Funes the Memorious,” Jorge Luis Borges describes a fictional version of S, a man with an infallible memory who is crippled by an inability to forget. He can’t distinguish between the trivial and the important. Borges’s character Funes can’t prioritize, can’t generalize. He is “virtually incapable of general, platonic ideas.” Like S, his memory was too good. Perhaps, as Borges concludes in his story, it is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human. To make sense of the world, we must filter it. “To think,” Borges writes, “is to forget. ~ Joshua Foer, #NFDB
1210:He cometido el peor de los pecados
que un hombre puede cometer. No he sido
feliz. Que los glaciares del olvido
me arrastren y me pierdan, despiadados.
Mis padres me engendraron para el juego
arriesgado y hermoso de la vida,
para la tierra, el agua, el aire, el fuego.
Los defraudé. No fui feliz. Cumplida
no fue su joven voluntad. Mi mente
se aplicó a las simétricas porfías
del arte, que entreteje naderías.
Me legaron valor. No fui valiente.
No me abandona. Siempre está a mi lado
La sombra de haber sido un desdichado. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1211:In his short story “Funes the Memorious,” Jorge Luis Borges describes a fictional version of S, a man with an infallible memory who is crippled by an inability to forget. He can’t distinguish between the trivial and the important. Borges’s character Funes can’t prioritize, can’t generalize. He is “virtually incapable of general, platonic ideas.” Like S, his memory was too good. Perhaps, as Borges concludes in his story, it is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human. To make sense of the world, we must filter it. “To think,” Borges writes, “is to forget. ~ Joshua Foer, #NFDB
1212:This web of time–the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries–embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not, and yet in others both of us exist. In this one, in which chance has favored me, you have come to my gate. In another, you, crossing the garden, have found me dead. In yet another, I say these very same words but am in error, a phantom Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures."
from “Garden of Forking Paths ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1213:...Éstas son maravillas, pero no se comparan con tu poema, que de algún modo las encierra. ¿Qué hechicería te lo dio?
-En el alba --dijo el poeta-- me recordé diciendo unas palabras que al principio no comprendí. Esas palabras son un poema. Sentí que había cometido un pecado, quizá el que no perdona el Espíritu.
-El que ahora compartimos los dos -- el Rey musitó--. El de haber conocido la Belleza, que es un don vedado a los hombres. Ahora nos toca expiarlo. Te di un espejo y una máscara de oro; he aquí el tercer regalo que será el último.
Le puso en la diestra una daga. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1214:To deny temporal succession, to deny the self, to deny the astronomical universe, are measures of apparent despair and of secret consolation. Our destiny (in contrast to Swedenborg's hell and the hell of Tibetan mythology) is not frightful because it is unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and ironbound. Time is the substance of which I am made. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which mangles me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1215:CARNICERIA
Ms vil que un lupanar
la carnicera rubrica como una afrenta la calle.
Sobre el dintel
una ciega cabeza de vaca
preside el aquelarre
de carne charra y mrmoles finales
con la remota majestad de un dolo.
AT THE BUTCHERS
Meaner than a house of prostitution
the meat market flaunts itself in the street like an
insult.
Above the door
the head of a steer in a blind-eyed stare
watches over the witches Sabbath
of flayed flesh and marble slabs
with the aloof majesty of an idol.
[Norman Thomas di Giovanni]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, At the Butchers
,#NFDB
1216:Days and nights passed over this despair of flesh, but one morning he awoke, looked (with calm now) at the blurred things that lay about him, and felt, inexplicably, the way one might feel upon recognizing a melody or a voice, that all this had happened to him before and that he had faced it with fear but also with joy and hopefulness and curiosity. Then he descended into his memory, which seemed to him endless, and managed to draw up from that vertigo the lost remembrance that gleamed like a coin in the rain - perhaps because he had never really looked at it except (perhaps) in a dream. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1217: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, #NFDB
1218:Era el solitario y lúcido espectador de un mundo multiforme, instantáneo y casi intolerablemente preciso. Babilonia, Londres y Nueva York han abrumado con feroz esplendor la imaginación de los hombres; nadie, en sus torres populosas o en sus avenidas urgentes, ha sentido el calor y la presión de una realidad tan infatigable como la que día y noche convergía sobre el infeliz Ireneo, en su pobre arrabal sudamericano. Le era muy difícil dormir. Dormir es distraerse del mundo; Funes, de espaldas en el catre, en la sombra, se figuraba cada grieta y cada moldura de las casas precisas que lo rodeaban ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1219: Neither darkness nor chaos. The darkness
requires eyes that see, like sound
and silence requires hearing,
and the mirror, the form that inhabits it.
Neither space nor time. Not even
a divinity that premeditated
the silence before the first
night of time, which will be infinite.
The great river of Dark Heraclitus
its irrevocable course has not undertaken,
that from the past flows into the future,
that from oblivion flows into oblivion.
Something that already suffers. Something that begs.
Then universal history. Now.
~ ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Cosmogonia (& translation)
,#NFDB
1220:Habré de levantar la vasta vida
que aún ahora es tu espejo:
cada mañana habré de reconstruirla.
Desde que te alejaste,
cuántos lugares se han tornado vanos
y sin sentido, iguales
a luces en el día.
Tardes que fueron nicho de tu imagen,
músicas en que siempre me aguardabas,
palabras de aquel tiempo- yo tendré que quebrarlas con mis manos.
¿En qué hondonada esconderé mi alma
para que no vea tu ausencia
que como un sol terrible, sin ocaso,
brilla definitiva y despiadada?
Tu ausencia me rodea
como la cuerda a la garganta,
el mar al que se hunde. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1221:El final de la historia sólo es referible en metáforas, ya que pasa en el reino de los cielos, donde no hay tiempo. Tal vez cabría decir que Aureliano conversó con Dios y que Éste se interesa tan poco en diferencias religiosas que lo tomó por Juan de Panonia. Ello, sin embargo, insinuaría una confusión de la mente divina. Más correcto es decir que en el paraíso, Aureliano supo que para la insondable divinidad, él y Juan de Panonia (el ortodoxo y el hereje, el aborrecedor y el aborrecido, el acusador y la víctima) formaban una sola persona. En las cruces rúnicas los dos emblemas enemigos conviven, entrelazados. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1222:Where will the centuries be, where will the dream
of swords that the Tartars dreamed of,
where the strong walls they leveled,
where the Adam Tree and the other Log?
The present is alone. The memory
erects time. Succession and deception
It is the routine of the clock. Year
it is no less vain than vain history.
Between dawn and night there is an abyss
of agonies, of lights, of cares;
the face that is seen in the worn ones
mirrors of the night is not the same.
The fleeting today is tenuous and is eternal;
another Heaven do not wait, nor another Hell.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The instant
,#NFDB
1223:This much is already known: for every sensible line of straightforward statement, there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles and incoherences. (I know of an uncouth region whose librarians repudiate the vain and superstitious custom of finding a meaning in books and equate it with that of finding a meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of one's palm . . . They admit that the inventors of this writing imitated the twenty-five natural symbols, but maintain that this application is accidental and that the books signify nothing in themselves. This dictum, we shall see, is not entirely fallacious.) ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1224:Diferentemente de Newton e de Schopenhauer, seu antepassado não acretitava num tempo uniforme, absoluto. Acreditava em infinitas séries de tempos, numa rede crescente e vertiginosa de tempos que se aproximam, se bifurcam, se cortam ou que secularmente se ignoram, abrange todas as possibilidades. Não existimos na maioria desses tempos; nalguns existe o senhor e não eu. Noutros, eu, não o senhor; noutros, os dois. Neste, que um acaso favorável me surpreende, o senhor chegou a minha casa; noutro, o senhor, ao atravessar o jardim, encontrou-me morto; noutro, digo estas mesmas palavras, mas sou um erro, um fantasma. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1225:Three hundred nights like three hundred walls
must rise between my love and me
and the sea will be a black art between us.
Time with a hard hand will tear out
the streets tangled in my breast.
Nothing will be left but memories.
(O afternoons earned with suffering,
nights hoping for the sight of you,
dejected vacant lots, poor sky
shamed in the bottom of the puddles
like a fallen angel. . . .
And your life that graces my desire
and that run-down and lighthearted neighborhood
shining today in the glow of my love. . . .)
Final as a statue
your absence will sadden other fields. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1226:The end of this story can only be related in metaphors since it takes place in the kingdom of heaven, where there is no time. Perhaps it would be correct to say that Aurelian spoke with God and that He was so little interested in religious differences that He took him for John of Pannonia. This, however, would imply a confusion in the divine mind. It is more correct to say that in Paradise, Aurelian learned that, for the unfathomable divinity, he and John of Pannonia (the orthodox believer and the heretic, the abhorrer and the abhorred, the accuser and the accused) formed one single person. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, The Theologians, #NFDB
1227:There is only one thing. It is oblivion.
God, who saves the metal, saves the slag
and figures in his prophetic memory
the moons that will be and those that have been.
Everything is done. The thousands of reflections
that between the two twilights of the day
your face was leaving in the mirrors
and those that will be leaving.
And everything is a part of the diverse
crystal of that memory, the universe;
their arduous corridors have no end
and the doors close as you pass;
just on the other side of sunset
you will see the Archetypes and Splendors.
~ ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Everness (& interpretation)
,#NFDB
1228:Let not the rash marble risk
garrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence,
in many words recalling
name, renown, events, birthplace.
All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.
Let not the marble say what men do not.
The essentials of the dead man's life--
the trembling hope,
the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight--
will abide forever.
Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continue
when it is the lives of others that will make that happen,
as you yourself are the mirror and image
of those who did not live as long as you
and others will be (and are) your immortality on earth. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1229:Gözlerimi yumuyorum ve bir kuş sürüsü görüyorum. Görüntü bir saniye sürüyor, Belki de daha az; kaç kuş gördüğümü bilmiyorum. Sayıları belli miydi? Değil miydi? Bu sorun Tanrı var mı sorusunu akla getiriyor. Eğer Tanrı varsa kuşların sayısı belli, çünkü o kuş gördüğümü biliyor. Tanrı yoksa sayıları belli değil, çünkü bu hesabı kimse yapamaz. Bu durumda (diyelim ki) ondan az, birden fazla sayıda kuş gördüm; ama dokuz, sekiz, yedi, altı, beş, dört, üç, iki kuş görmedim. Onla bir arasında bir sayıda, ama dokuz, sekiz, yedi, altı beş vb. değil. Bu tam sayı bilinmez; ergo** Tanrı vardır.
**Öyleyse, dolayısıyla
"Yaratan" kitabından ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1230:If I could live again my life,
In the next - I'll try,
- to make more mistakes,
I won't try to be so perfect,
I'll be more relaxed...
I'll take fewer things seriously..
I'll take more risks,
I'll take more trips,
I'll watch more sunsets,
I'll climb more mountains,
I'll swim more rivers,
I'll go to more places I've never been
I'll eat more ice ...I'll have more real problems and less imaginary ones
If I could live again - I will travel light
If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feet at the beginning of spring till the end of autumn,
I'll watch more sunrises ...If I have the life to live ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1231:him. I also recall the great poster for Ana Christie with Greta Garbo, based on a Eugene O’Neill play. ‘Garbo Talks’ it said. In that film, a series of inns were shown to stimulate our expectations, then there was mist, then a horse in the mist, then finally a woman arrived from Sweden and walked across the stage. Ferrari. Was it Greta Garbo? Borges. Yes, she arrived at the bar and slowly strolled past a very long table. We all expected her to talk—we were waiting to hear Greta Garbo’s voice, her never-heard-before voice. What we did hear was a hoarse voice that said, ‘Give me a whisky.’ It made us shiver with emotion. That was her first talkie. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1232:With lingering love she gazed at the dispersed
Colors of dusk. It pleased her utterly
To lose herself in the complex melody
Or in the cunous life to be found in verse.
lt was not the primal red but rather grays
That spun the fine thread of her destiny,
For the nicest distinctions and all spent
In waverings, ambiguities, delays.
Lacking the nerve to tread this treacherous
Labyrinth, she looked in on, whom without,
The shapes, the turbulence, the striving rout,
(Like the other lady of the looking glass.)
The gods that dwell too far away for prayer
Abandoned her to the final tiger, Fire.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Susana Soca
,#NFDB
1233:Alhambra
Welcome, the water’s voice
To one whom black sand overwhelmed,
Welcome, to the curved hand
The smooth column of the marble,
Welcome, slender labyrinths of water
Between the lemon trees,
Welcome the melodious zéjel,
Welcome is love, welcome the prayer
Offered to a God who is One,
Welcome the jasmine.
Vain the scimitar
Against the long lances of the host,
Vain to be the best.
Good to know, foreknow, grieving king,
That your courtesies are farewells,
That the key will be denied you,
The infidels’ cross eclipse the moon,
The afternoon you gaze on prove your last.
Granada, 1976. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1234:Beatrice esistette infinitamente per Dante. Dante, molto poco, forse niente, per Beatrice; tutti noi siamo propensi, per pieta, per venerazione, a dimenticare questo penoso contrasto, indimenticabile per Dante. Leggo e rileggo le traversie del suo illusorio incontro e penso a due amanti che l’Alighieri sognò nella bufera del secondo cerchio e che sono emblemi oscuri, anche se egli non lo comprese o non lo volle, di quella felicita che non ottenne. Penso a Francesca e a Paolo, uniti per sempre nel loro Inferno («Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso»). Con un amore spaventoso, con angoscia, con ammirazione, con invidia, deve aver forgiato questo verso. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1235:It opens, the gate to the garden
with the docility of a page
that frequent devotion questions
and inside, my gaze
has no need to fix on objects
that already exist, exact, in memory.
I know the customs and souls
and that dialect of allusions
that every human gathering goes weaving.
I've no need to speak
nor claim false privilege;
they know me well who surround me here,
know well my afflictions and weakness.
This is to reach the highest thing,
that Heaven perhaps will grant us:
not admiration or victory
but simply to be accepted
as part of an undeniable Reality,
like stones and trees.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Simplicity
,#NFDB
1236:Dream"
If dreaming really were a kind of truce
(as people claim), a sheer repose of mind,
why then if you should waken up abruptly,
do you feel that something has been stolen from you?
Why should it be so sad, the early morning?
It robs us of an inconceivable gift,
so intimate it is only knowable
in a trance which the nightwatch gilds with dreams,
dreams that might very well be reflections,
fragments from the treasure-house of darkness,
from the timeless sphere that does not have a name,
and that the day distorts in its mirrors.
Who will you be tonight in your dreamfall
into the dark, on the other side of the wall? ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1237:Emerson said that a library is a magic chamber in which there are many enchanted spirits. They wake when we call them. When the book lies unopened, it is literally, geometrically, a volume, a thing among things. When we open it, when the book surrenders itself to its reader, the aesthetic event occurs. And even for the same reader the same book changes, for the change; we are the river of Heraclitus, who said that the man of yesterday is not the man of today, who will not be the man of tomorrow. We change incessantly, and each reading of a book, each rereading, each memory of that rereading, reinvents the text. The text too is the changing river of Heraclitus. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1238:El comedor y la biblioteca de mis recuerdos eran ahora, derribada la pared medianera, una sola gran pieza desmantelada, con uno que otro mueble. No trataré de describirlos, porque no estoy seguro de haberlos visto, pese a la despiadada luz blanca. Me explicaré. Para ver una cosa hay que comprenderla. El sillón presupone el cuerpo humano, sus articulaciones y partes; las tijeras, el acto de cortar. ¿Qué decir de una lámpara o de un vehículo? El salvaje no puede percibir la biblia del misionero; el pasajero no ve el mismo cordaje que los hombres de a bordo. Si viéramos realmente el universo, tal vez lo entenderíamos. "
Extracto del relato THERE ARE MORE THINGS ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1239:„Ştia forma norilor australi din ziua de 30 aprilie 1882, şi putea s-o compare cu nervurile unei cărţi din hârtie spaniolă pe care o privise o singură dată sau cu crestele de spumă pe care o vâslă le-a ridicat pe Rio Negro în ajunul luptei de la Quebracho. Aceste amintiri nu erau simple; fiecare imagine vizuală era legată de senzaţii musculare, termice etc. Putea să reconstruiască toate visele. De două sau de trei ori reconstruise câte o zi întreagă. Mi-a spus: Eu singur am mai multe amintiri decât toţi oamenii de când lumea e lume. Şi-a continuat: Visele mele sunt ca veghea dumneavoastră. Iar spre ziuă a adăugat: Memoria mea, domnule, este asemeni unui depozit de gunoi ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1240:Things, events, that occupy space yet come to an end when someone dies make us stop in wonder - and yet one thing, or an infinite number of things, dies with every man's or woman's death, unless the universe itself has a memory, as theosophists have suggested. In the course of time there was one day that closed the last eyes that had looked on Christ; the battle of Junín and the love of Helen died with the death of one man. What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonio Fernández, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk? ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1241:Years later, Taylor was inspecting the jails of the kingdom; and in the one at Nittur the ceiling had been covered, in barbaric colours, which time was subtilizing before erasing them, by a Muslim fakir's elaboration of a kind of infinite Tiger. This Tiger was composed of many tigers in the most vertiginous fashion : it was traversed by tigers, scored by tigers and it contained seas and Himalayas and armies which seemed to reveal still other tigers. The painter had died many years ago in this very cell; he had come from Sind, or maybe Guzerat, and his original purpose had been to design a map of the world. Indeed, some traces of this were yet to be discerned in the monstrous image.... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1242:At the railroad station he noted that he still had thirty minutes. He quickly recalled that in a cafe on the Calle Brazil (a few dozen feet from Yrigoyen's house) there was an enormous cat which allowed itself to be caressed as if it were a disdainful divinity. He entered the cafe. There was the cat, asleep. He ordered a cup of coffee, slowly stirred the sugar, sipped it (this pleasure had been denied him in the clinic), and thought, as he smoothed the cat's black coat, that this contact was an illusion and that the two beings, man and cat, were as good as separated by a glass, for man lives in time, in succession, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1243:On üçüncü yüzyılın son yıllarında yaşayan bir leopar, sabahın şafağından akşamın alacakaranlığına kadar birkaç kalas, birkaç demir parmaklık, durmadan değişen erkek ve kadın yüzleri, bir duvar ve belki de kuru yapraklarla dolu taş bir yalak gördü. Sevgiyi ve yırtıcılığı, avını parçalamanın harlı zevkini, geyik kokuları getiren rüzgârı özlediğini bilemedi, bilemezdi. Gene de içinde bir şeyler tıkandı, bir şeyler isyan etti ve Tanrı ona rüyasında şunları söyledi: “Kullarımdan biri seni şu kadar kere görsün ve seni evrenin düzeninde yeri önceden belli bir şiirde bir suret ve simge olarak kullansın diye bu hapishanede yaşayacak ve öleceksin. Şimdi tutsaksın, ama şiire bir sözcük katmış olacaksın. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1244:Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf
At various times, I have asked myself what reasons
moved me to study, while my night came down,
without particular hope of satisfaction,
the language of the blunt-tongued Anglo-Saxons.
Used up by the years, my memory
loses its grip on words that I have vainly
repeated and repeated. My life in the same way
weaves and unweaves its weary history.
Then I tell myself: it must be that the soul
has some secret, sufficient way of knowing
that it is immortal, that its vast, encompassing
circle can take in all, can accomplish all.
Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing,
the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1245:Lo recuerdo (yo no tengo derecho a pronunciar ese verbo sagrado, sólo un hombre en la tierra tuvo derecho y ese hombre ha muerto) con una oscura pasionaria en la mano, viéndola como nadie la ha visto, aunque la mirara desde el crepúsculo del día hasta el de la noche, toda una vida entera. Lo recuerdo, la cara taciturna y aindiada y singularmente remota, detrás del cigarrillo. Recuerdo (creo) sus manos afiladas de trenzador. Recuerdo cerca de esas manos un mate, con las armas de la Banda Oriental; recuerdo en la ventana de la casa una estera amarilla, con un vago paisaje lacustre. Recuerdo claramente su voz; la voz pausada, resentida y nasal del orillero antiguo, sin los silbidos italianos de ahora. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1246:Hell had become, over the years, a wearisome speculation. Even its proselytizers have neglected it, abandoning the poor, but serviceable, human allusion which the ecclesiastic fires of the Holy Office once had in this world: a temporal torment, of course, but one that was not unworthy, within its terrestrial limitations, of being a metaphor for the immortal, for the perfect pain without destruction that the objects of divine wrath will forever endure. Whether or not this hypothesis is satisfactoy, an increasing lassitude in the propaganda of the institution is indisputable. (Do not be alarmed; I use propaganda here not in its commercial but rather in its Catholic genealogy: a congregation of cardinals.) ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1247:There is a Hindu school of philosophy that says that we are not the actors in our lives, but rather the spectators, and this is illustrated using the metaphor of a dancer. These days, maybe it would be better to say an actor. A spectator sees a dancer or an actor, or, if you prefer, reads a novel, and ends up identifying with one of the characters who is there in front of him. This is what those Hindu thinkers before the fifth century said. And the same thing happens with us. I, for example, was born the same day as Jorge Luis Borges, exactly the same day. I have seen him be ridiculous in some situations, pathetic in others. And, as I have always had him in front of me, I have ended up identifying with him. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1248:La morte (o la sua allusione) rende preziosi e patetici gli uomini. Questi si commuovono per la loro condizione di fantasmi; ogni atto che compiono può esser l'ultimo; non c'è volto che non sia sul punto di cancellarsi come il volto d'un sogno. Tutto, tra i mortali, ha il valore dell'irrecuperabile e del casuale. Tra gl'Immortali, invece, ogni atto (e ogni pensiero) è l'eco d'altri che nel passato lo precedettero, senza principio visibile, o il fedele presagio di altri che nel futuro lo ripeteranno fino alla vertigine. Non c'è cosa che non sia come perduta tra infaticabili specchi. Nulla può accadere una sola volta, nulla è preziosamente precario. Ciò ch'è elegiaco, grave, rituale, non vale per gli Immortali. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1249:Throughout the earth there are ancient forms, forms incorruptible and eternal; any one of them could be the symbol I sought. A mountain could be the speech of the god, or a river or the empire or the configuration of the stars. But in the process of the centuries the mountain is levelled and the river will change its course, empires experience mutilation and havoc and the configuration of the stars varies. There is change in the firmament. The mountain and the star are individuals and individuals perish. I sought something more tenacious, more invulnerable. I thought of the generations of cereals, of grasses, or birds, of men. Perhaps the magic would be written on my face, perhaps I myself was the end of my search. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1250:We are the time. We are the famous
metaphor from Heraclitus the Obscure.
We are the water, not the hard diamond,
the one that is lost, not the one that stands still.
We are the river and we are that greek
that looks himself into the river. His reflection
changes into the waters of the changing mirror,
into the crystal that changes like the fire.
We are the vain predetermined river,
in his travel to his sea.
The shadows have surrounded him.
Everything said goodbye to us, everything goes away.
Memory does not stamp his own coin.
However, there is something that stays
however, there is something that bemoans.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, We Are The Time. We Are The Famous
,#NFDB
1251:The certitude that everything has been written negates us or turns us into phantoms. I know of districts in which the young men prostrate themselves before books and kiss their pages in a barbarous manner, but they do not know how to decipher a single letter. Epidemics, heretical conflicts, peregrinations which inevitably degenerate into banditry, have decimated the population. I believe I have mentioned suicides, more and more frequent with the years. Perhaps my old age and fearfulness deceive me, but I suspect that the human species -- the unique species -- is about to be extinguished, but the Library will endure: illuminated, solitary, infinite, perfectly motionless, equipped with precious volumes, useless, incorruptible, secret. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1252:God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and he understood the reasons, and accepted his destiny; but when he awoke there was only a dark resignation, a valiant ignorance, for the machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of a wild beast.
Years later, Dante was dying in Ravenna, as unjustified and as lonely as any other man. In a dream, God declared to him the secret purpose of his life and work; Dante, in wonderment, knew at last who and what he was and blessed the bitterness of his life....upon waking, he felt that he had received and lost an infinite thing, something that he would not be able to recuperate or even glimpse, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a man. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1253:There are objects made up of two sense elements, one visual, the other auditory—the colour of a sunrise and the distant call of a bird. Other objects are made up of many elements—the sun, the water against the swimmer's chest, the vague quivering pink which one sees when the eyes are closed, the feeling of being swept away by a river or by sleep. These second degree objects can be combined with others; using certain abbreviations, the process is practically an infinite one. There are famous poems made up of one enormous word, a word which in truth forms a poetic object, the creation of the writer. The fact that no one believes that nouns refer to an actual reality means, paradoxically enough, that there is no limit to the numbers of them. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1254:By the time I first encountered Jung, as a teenager in the early 1970s, this was certainly happening. Jung may not have been accepted by mainstream intellectuals—Freud was their psychologist of choice—but he had certainly been adopted by the counterculture. When I first read Memories, Dreams, Reflections—his “so-called autobiography”—Jung was part of a canon of “alternative” thinkers that included Hermann Hesse, Alan Watts, Carlos Castaneda, D. T. Suzuki, R. D. Laing, Aldous Huxley, Jorge Luis Borges, Aleister Crowley, Timothy Leary, Madame Blavatsky, and J. R. R. Tolkien, to name a few. That his face appeared on the cover of the Beatles’ famous Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, in a crowd of other unorthodox characters, was endorsement enough. ~ Gary Lachman, #NFDB
1255:Os evangelhos também podem ser lidos de duas maneiras. Pelo fiel, são lidos como a estranha história de um homem, de um deus, que expia os pecados da humanidade. Um deus que se digna ao sofrimento — a morte na "amarga cruz", como diz Shakespeare. Há ainda uma terceira interpretação, que encontrei em Langland: a ideia de que Deus queria saber tudo sobre o sofrimento humano e que não Lhe bastava sabê-lo intelectualmente, como é facultado a um deus; queria sofrer como um homem, e com as limitações de um homem. Contudo, se você for um incrédulo (muitos de nós somos), então poderá ler a história de modo diverso. Pôde pensar num homem de gênio, num homem que pensava ser deus e que no final descobriu ser somente um homem, e que deus — o seu deus — o abandonara. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1256:short work of fiction by Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel.” Imagine an infinite number of rooms, stacked atop one another, in which are stored not only all the books ever written but also all the books that ever will be, each of them in every dialect of every language known to mankind and of every language yet to be learned or formed in days to come. In addition, there is a book of the life of everyone who has ever lived or will live, and an infinite number of other volumes of all genres and purposes that could be imagined. There are books that make no sense and books that seem to make sense but perhaps do not. And the sheer quantity ensures that no one can read a sufficient percentage of it to arrive at an explanation of the library, life, or anything else. Bibi ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1257:El verbo leer, como el verbo amar y el verbo soñar, no soporta ‘el modo imperativo’. Yo siempre les aconsejé a mis estudiantes que si un libro los aburre lo dejen; que no lo lean porque es famoso, que no lean un libro porque es moderno, que no lean un libro porque es antiguo. La lectura debe ser una de las formas de la felicidad y no se puede obligar a nadie a ser feliz.
The verb reading, like the verb to love and the verb dreaming, doesn't bear the imperative mode. I always advised to my students that if a book bores them leave it; That they don't read it because it's famous, that they don't read a book because it's modern, that they don't read a book because it's antique. The reading should be one of the ways of happiness and nobody can be obliged to be happy. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1258:Ese funcionamiento silencioso,comparable al de Dios, provoca toda suerte de conjeturas. Alguna abominablemente insinúa que hace ya siglos que no existe la Compañía y que el sacro desorden de nuestras vidas es puramente hereditario, tradicional; otra la juzga eterna y enseña que perdurará hasta la última
noche, cuando el último dios anonade el mundo. Otra declara que la Compañía es
omnipotente, pero que sólo influye en cosas minúsculas: en el grito de un pájaro, en los matices de la herrumbre y del polvo, en los entre-sueños del alba. Otra, por boca de heresiarcas enmascarados, que no ha existido nunca y no existirá. Otra, no menos vil,
razona que es indiferente afirmar o negar la realidad de la tenebrosa corporación, porque Babilonia no es otra cosa que un infinito juego de azares. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1259:When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are saved
by humble windfalls
of the mindfulness or memory:
the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,
that face given back to us by a dream,
the first jasmine of November,
the endless yearning of the compass,
a book we thought was lost,
the throb of a hexameter,
the slight key that opens a house to us,
the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,
the former name of a street,
the colors of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.
Eight million Shinto deities
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us
touch us and move on.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Shinto
,#NFDB
1260:Word for word, Galland’s version [of the One Thousand and One Nights] is the worst written, the most fraudulent and the weakest, but it was the most widely read. Readers who grew intimate with it experienced happiness and amazement. Its orientalism, which we now find tame, dazzled the sort of person who inhaled snuff and plotted tragedies in five acts. Twelve exquisite volumes appeared from 1707 to 1717, twelve volumes innumerably read, which passed into many languages, including Hindustani and Arabic. We, mere anachronistic readers of the twentieth century, perceive in these volumes the cloyingly sweet taste of the eighteenth century and not the evanescent oriental aroma that two hundred years ago was their innovation and their glory. No one is to blame for this missed encounter, least of all Galland. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1261:When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are saved
by humble windfalls
of the mindfulness or memory:
the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,
that face given back to us by a dream,
the first jasmine of November,
the endless yearning of the compass,
a book we thought was lost,
the throb of a hexameter,
the slight key that opens a house to us,
the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,
the former name of a street,
the colors of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.
Eight million Shinto deities
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us--
touch us and move on.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, When sorrow lays us low
,#NFDB
1262:Una de las escuelas de Tlön llega a negar el tiempo: razona que el presente es indefinido, que el futuro no tiene realidad sino como esperanza presente, que el pasado no tiene realidad sino como recuerdo presente. Otra escuela declara que ha transcurrido ya todo el tiempo y que nuestra vida es apenas el recuerdo o reflejo crepuscular, y sin duda falseado y mutilado, de un proceso irrecuperable. Otra, que la historia del universo- y en ella nuestras vidas y el más tenue detalle de nuestras vidas- es la escritura que produce un dios subalterno para entenderse con un demonio. Otra, que el universo es comparable a esas criptografías en las que no valen todos los símbolos y que sólo es verdad lo que sucede cada trescientas noches. Otra, que mientras dormimos aquí, estamos despiertos en otro lado y que así cada hombre es dos hombres. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1263:From these two incontrovertible premises he deduced that the Library is total and that its shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty-odd orthographical symbols (a number which, though extremely vast, is not infinite): in other words, all that it is given to express, in all languages. Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogue of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, #NFDB
1264:A alma busca o fim, com urgência./Escureceu um pouco. Já morreu./Anda uma mosca pela carne quieta./Que pode me servir que aquele homem/tenha sofrido, se eu sofro agora?/// O alívio que tu e eu sentiremos no instante que precede a morte, quando a sorte nos desate do triste costume de ser alguém e do peso do universo./// Somos o vão rio prefixado, rumo a seu mar. Pela sombra cercado./Tudo nos disse adeus, tudo nos deixa./A memória não cunha sua moeda./E no entanto há algo que se queda/e no entanto há algo que se queixa/// Que são as nuvens? Uma arquitetura do azar? Deus, talvez, as necessita para a execução de Sua infinita obra e são fios da trama obscura. Talvez a nuvem seja não menos vã do que o homem que a olha de manhã/// Aos outros resta o universo; à minha penumbra, o hábito do verso///Não há outros paraísos a não ser os paraísos perdidos. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1265:UN PATIO
Con la tarde
se cansaron los dos o tres colores del patio.
La gran franqueza de la luna llena
ya no entusiasma su habitual firmamento.
Patio, cielo encauzado.
El patio es el declive
por el cual se derrama el cielo en la casa.
Serena,
la eternidad espera en la encrucijada de estrellas.
Grato es vivir en la amistad oscura
de un zagun, de una parra y de un aljibe.
PATIO
With evening
the two or three colors of the patio grew weary.
The huge candor of the full moon
no longer enchants its usual firmament.
Patio: heavens watercourse.
The patio is the slope
down which the sky flows into the house.
Serenely
eternity waits at the crossway of the stars.
It is lovely to live in the dark friendliness
of covered entrance way, arbor, and wellhead.
[Robert Fitzgerald]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Patio
,#NFDB
1266:At first cautiously, later indifferently, at last desperately, I wandered up the stairs and along the pavement of the inextricable palace. (Afterwards I learned that the width and height of the steps were not constant, a fact which made me understand the singular fatigue they produced). 'This palace is a fabrication of the gods,' I thought at the beginning. I explored the uninhabited interiors and corrected myself: ' The gods who built it have died.' I noted its peculiarities and said: 'The gods who built it were mad.' I said it, I know, with an incomprehensible reprobation which was almost remorse, with more intellectual horror than palpable fear...
...'This City' (I thought) 'is so horrible that its mere existence and perdurance, though in the midst of a secret desert, contaminates the past and the future and in some way even jeopardizes the stars. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1267:One of the schools of Tlön goes so far as to negate time; it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than as a present hope, that the past has no reality other than as a present memory. Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified an mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process. Another, that the history of the universe — and in it our lives and the most tenuous detail of our lives — is the scripture produced by a subordinate god in order to communicate with a demon. Another, that the universe is comparable to those cryptographs in which not all the symbols are valid and that only what happens every three hundred nights is true. Another, that while we sleep here, we are awake elsewhere and that in this way every man is two men. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1268:Gracias quiero dar al divino
Laberinto de los efectos y de las causas
Por la diversidad de las criaturas
Que forman este singular universo,
Por la razón, que no cesará de soñar
Con un plano del laberinto,
Por el rostro de Elena y la perseverancia de Ulises,
Por el amor, que nos deja ver a los otros
Como los ve la divinidad,
Por el firme diamante y el agua suelta,
Por el álgebra, palacio de precisos cristales,
Por las místicas monedas de Angel Silesio,
Por Schopenhauer,
Que acaso descifró el universo,
Por el fulgor del fuego
Que ningún ser humano puede mirar sin un asombro
antiguo,
(...)
Por Whitman y Francisco de Asís, que ya escribieron el
poema,
Por el hecho de que el poema es inagotable
Y se confunde con la suma de las criaturas
Y no llegará jamás al último verso
Y varía según los hombres... ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1269:It was under English trees that I meditated on that lost labyrinth: I pictured it perfect and inviolate on the secret summit of a mountain; I pictured its outlines blurred by rice paddies, or underwater; I pictured it as infinite—a labyrinth not of octagonal pavillions and paths that turn back upon themselves, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms....I imagined a labyrinth of labyrinths, a maze of mazes, a twisting, turning, ever-widening labyrinth that contained both past and future and somehow implied the stars. Absorbed in those illusory imaginings, I forgot that I was a pursued man; I felt myself, for an indefinite while, the abstract perceiver of the world. The vague, living countryside, the moon, the remains of the day did their work in me; so did the gently downward road, which forestalled all possibility of weariness. The evening was near, yet infinite. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1270:O DESPĂRŢIRE
Înserare ce-ai subminat despărţirea noastră.
Înserare tăioasă,încântătoare şi monstruoasă,
asemeni unui înger întunecat.
Înserare în care gurile noastre au cunoscut intimitatea pură a sărutărilor.
Timpul inevitabil se revărsa
peste îmbrăţişarea inutilă.
Făceam risipă de pasiune împreună,nu pentru noi,
ci pentru singurătatea ce curând avea să vină.
Lumina ne-a respins;noaptea sosise în mare grabă.
Te-am condus acasă în ceasul de gravitate al umbrei pe care numai
luceafărul o atenuează.
Precum cel ce se-ntoarce dintr-o pajişte pierdută,aşa m-am întors eu desprins din îmbrăţişarea ta.
Precum cel ce se-ntoarce dintr-un tărâm de spade,aşa m-am întors eu
din lacrimile tale.
Înserare ce rămîi vie ca un vis
printre celălalte înserări.
Aveam să ating apoi şi să las în urmă
rând pe rând nopţi şi depărtări. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1271:Ars Poetica
To gaze at the river made of time and water
And recall that time itself is another river,
To know we cease to be, just like the river,
And that our faces pass away, just like the water.
To feel that waking is another sleep
That dreams it does not sleep and that death,
Which our flesh dreads, is that very death
Of every night, which we call sleep.
To see in the day or in the year a symbol
Of mankind's days and of his years,
To transform the outrage of the years
Into a music, a rumor and a symbol,
To see in death a sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold, of such is Poetry
Immortal and a pauper. For Poetry
Returns like the dawn and the sunset.
At times in the afternoons a face
Looks at us from the depths of a mirror;
Art must be like that mirror
That reveals to us this face of ours. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1272:Owego dnia wszystko stało się dla mnie jasne. Troglodyci byli Nieśmiertelnymi; potok o piaszczystych wodach był Rzeką, której poszukiwał jeździec. Co do miasta, którego sława dotarła aż do Gangesu, minęło już dziewięć wieków od czasu, gdy Nieśmiertelni je zniszczyli. Przy pomocy pozostałości jego ruin wznieśli, w tym samym miejscu, niedorzeczne miasto, które obszedłem; rodzaj parodii czy odwrócenia i również świątyni irracjonalnych bóstw, które kierują światem o których niczego nie wiemy prócz tego, że nie są podobne do człowieka. Budowla ta była ostatnim symbolem, na jaki pozwolili sobie Nieśmiertelni; oznaczała ona etap, w którym przekonani, że każde przedsięwzięcie jest jałowe, postanowili żyć dla myśli, dla czystej spekulacji. Wznieśli budowlę, zapomnieli o niej i poszli mieszkać w jaskiniach. Pogrążeni w swych rozmyślaniach, prawie nie dostrzegali świata zewnętrznego. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1273:Boast of Quietness
Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than meteors.
The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.
Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious and would like to
understand them.
Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.
Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.
They speak of humanity.
My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of that same poverty.
They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword,
the willow grove's visible prayer as evening falls.
Time is living me.
More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.
They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.
My name is someone and anyone.
I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1274:. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
Suárez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658 ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1275:FANFARONADĂ DE LINIŞTE
Scripturi de lumină se năpustesc asupra umbrei,mai uimitoare decât meteorii.
Mîndrul oraş necunoascut se revarsă peste câmpie.
Sigur de viaţa şi de moartea mea,mă uit la ambiţioşi şi-aş vrea să-i înţeleg.
Ziua lor e lacomă ca un laţ în aer.
Noaptea lor e răgazul mâniei în tăişul spadei,gata să se dezlănţuie.
Vorbesc despre omenie.
Omenia mea înseamnă să simt că sîntem glasurile aceleiaşi sărăcii.
Vorbesc despre patrie.
Patria mea este un acord de chitară,câteva portrete şi o spadă veche,
Rugăciunea curată a pîlcului de sălcii în asfinţit.
Timpul mă trăieşte pe mine.
Mai tăcut decât umbra mea,trec prin mulţimea lacomă.
Ambiţioşii se cred indispensabili,unici,vrednici să stăpînescă ziua de mâine.
Numele meu este cineva şi nimeni.
Trec fără grabă,cum trece-un om ce vine de foarte departe şi nu mai
trage nădejdea să ajungă. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1276:At first cautiously, later indifferently, at last desperately, I wandered up the stairs and along the pavement of the inextricable palace. (Afterwards I learned that the width and height of the steps were not constant, a fact which made me understand the singular fatigue they produced). 'This palace is a fabrication of the gods,' I thought at the beginning. I explored the uninhabited interiors and corrected myself: ' The gods who built it have died.' I noted its peculiarities and said: 'The gods who built it were mad.' I said it, I know, with an incomprehensible reprobation which was almost remorse, with more intellectual horror than palpable fear...
...'This City' (I thought) 'is so horrible that its mere existence and perdurance, though in the midst of a secret desert, contaminates the past and the future and in some way even jeopardizes the stars.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings,#NFDB
1277:Algún recuerdo limitado y menguante de Herbert Ashe, ingeniero de los ferrocarriles del Sur, persiste en el hotel de Adrogué, entre las efusivas madreselvas y en el fondo ilusorio de los espejos. En vida padeció de irrealidad, como tantos ingleses; muerto, no es siquiera el fantasma que ya era entonces. Era alto y desganado y su cansada barba rectangular había sido roja. Entiendo que era viudo, sin hijos. Cada tantos años iba a Inglaterra: a visitar (juzgo por unas fotografías que nos mostró) un reloj de sol y unos robles. Mi padre había estrechado con él (el verbo es excesivo) una de esas amistades inglesas que empiezan por excluir la confidencia y que muy pronto omiten el diálogo. Solían ejercer un intercambio de libros y de periódicos; solían batirse al ajedrez, taciturnamente... Lo recuerdo en el corredor del hotel, con un libro de matemáticas en la mano, mirando a veces los colores irrecuperables del cielo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1278:Si tengo que definir la poesía y no las tengo todas conmigo, si no me siento demasiado seguro, digo algo como: «poesía es la expresión de la belleza por medio de palabras artísticamente entretejidas». Esta definición podría valer para un diccionario o para un libro de texto, pero a nosotros nos parece poco convincente. Hay algo mucho más importante: algo que nos animaría no sólo a seguir ensayando la poesía, sino a disfrutarla y a sentir que lo sabemos todo sobre ella.
Esto significa que sabemos qué es la poesía. Lo sabemos tan bien que no podemos definirla con otras palabras, como somos incapaces de definir el sabor del café, el color rojo o amarillo o el significado de la ira, el amor, el odio, el amanecer, el atardecer o el amor por nuestro país. Estas cosas están tan arraigadas en nosotros que sólo pueden ser expresadas por esos símbolos comunes que compartimos. ¿Y por qué habríamos de necesitar más palabras? ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1279:Después de un tiempo,
uno aprende la sutil diferencia
entre sostener una mano
y encadenar un alma,
y uno aprende que el amor
no significa acostarse
y una compañía no significa seguridad
y uno empieza a aprender.
Que los besos no son contratos y los regalos no son promesas
y uno empieza a aceptar sus derrotas con la cabeza alta y los ojos abiertos y uno aprende a construir todos sus caminos en el hoy,
porque el terreno de mañana
es demasiado inseguro para planes...
y los futuros tienen una forma de caerse en la mitad.
Y después de un tiempo
uno aprende que si es demasiado,
hasta el calorcito del sol quema.
Así que uno planta su propio jardín
y decora su propia alma, en lugar
de esperar a que alguien le traiga flores. Y uno aprende que realmente puede aguantar, que uno realmente es fuerte,
que uno realmente vale, y uno aprende y aprende...
y con cada día uno aprende. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1280:Szerintem egy írónak sohasem szabad kortárs témához nyúlnia és túl konkrét színhelyet választania a történethez. Mert akkor az olvasók azonnal hibákat találnak benne. Vagy ha nem találnak, keresni fognak, és amit keresnek, azt meg is találják. Ezért szeretem a novelláimat nehezen meghatározható helyekre és sok évvel ezelőttre helyezni. (…) Úgy gondolom, térben és időben egyaránt érdemes bizonyos távolságot tartani. Szerintem egyébként is viszonylag új keletű az a nézet, hogy az irodalomnak kortárs témákról kell szólnia. Ha nem tévedek, az Íliász két-háromszáz évvel Trója eleste után íródott. Szerintem a képzelet szabadsága megkívánja, hogy térben és időben távoli témákhoz nyúljunk, vagy ha ez nem megy, akkor a mai tudományos-fantasztikus írók módjára más bolygókra helyezzük a történetet. Mert ha nem így cselekszünk, a valóság egy kicsit mindig meg fogja kötni a kezünket. Az irodalom máris túlzottan hasonlít az újságíráshoz. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1281:Books
The universe (which others call the library). . .
-Jorge Luis Borges
Books
Books
Books
Books
Books
Books
Books
Books
Books
Books
Books
Books
Books
Books
Books
Books
which are stitched up the center with coarse white thread
on the beach with sunglass-colored pages
about food with pictures of weeping grapefruits
about baking bread with browned corners
about long-haired Frenchmen with uncut pages
of erotic engravings with pages that stick
about inns whose stars have sputtered out
of illuminations surrounded by darkness
with blank pages & printed margins
with fanatical footnotes in no-point type
with book lice
with rice-paper pastings
with book fungus blooming over their pages
with pages of skin with flesh-colored bindings
by men in love with the letter O
which smell of earth whose pages turn
~ Erica Jong,#NFDB
1282:INSCRIPCION SEPULCRAL
Para el coronel Isidoro Surez, mi bisabuelo
Dilat su valor sobre los Andes.
Contrast montaas y ejrcitos.
La audacia fue costumbre de su espada.
Impuso en Junn trmino venturoso a la lucha
y a las lanzas del Per dio sangre espaola.
Escribi su censo de hazaas
en prosa rgida como los clarines belsonos.
Muri cercado de un destierro implacable.
Hoy es un poco de ceniza y de gloria.
SEPULCHRAL INSCRIPTION
For Colonel Isidoro Surez, my great-grandfather
His valor passed beyond the Andes.
He fought against mountains and armies.
Audacity was a habit with his sword.
At Junn he put a lucky end to the fight
and gave Spanish blood to Peruvian lances.
He wrote his roll of deeds
in prose inflexible as battlesinging trumpets.
He died walled in by implacable exile.
Now he is a handful of dust and glory.
[Robert Fitzgerald]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Sepulchral Inscription
,#NFDB
1283:Puis il réfléchit: la réalité ne coïncide habituellement pas avec les prévisions; avec une logique perverse, il en déduisit que prévoir un détail circonstanciel, c'est empêcher que celui-ci se réalise. Fidèle à cette faible magie, il inventait, pour les empêcher de se réaliser, des péripéties atroces; naturellement, il finit par craindre que ces péripéties ne fussent prophétiques. Misérable dans la nuit, il essayait de s'affirmer en quelque sorte dans la substance fugitive du temps. Il savait que celui-ci se précipitait vers l'aube du 29; il raisonnait à haute voix; je suis maintenant dans la nuit du 22; tant que durera cette nuit (et six nuits de plus) je suis invulnérable, immortel. Il pensait que les nuits de sommeil étaient des piscines profondes et sombres dans lesquels il pouvait se plonger. Il souhaitait parfois avec impatience la décharge définitive qui le libérerait tant bien que mal de son vain travail d'imagination. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1284:I believe that the phrase ‘obligatory reading’ is a contradiction in terms; reading should not be obligatory. Should we ever speak of 'obligatory pleasure'? Pleasure is not obligatory, pleasure is something we seek. 'Obligatory happiness'! [...] If a book bores you, leave it; don’t read it because it is famous, don’t read it because it is modern, don’t read a book because it is old. If a book is tedious to you, leave it, even if that book is 'Paradise Lost' — which is not tedious to me — or 'Don Quixote' — which also is not tedious to me. But if a book is tedious to you, don't read it; that book was not written for you. Reading should be a form of happiness, so I would advise all possible readers of my last will and testament—which I do not plan to write— I would advise them to read a lot, and not to get intimidated by writers' reputations, to continue to look for personal happiness, personal enjoyment. It is the only way to read. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1285:He told me that in 1886 he had invented an original system of numbering and that in a very few days he had gone beyond the twenty-four-thousand mark. He had not written it down, since anything he thought of once would never be lost to him. His first stimulus was, I think, his discomfort at the fact that the famous thirty-three gauchos of Uruguayan history should require two signs and two words, in place of a single word and a single sign. He then applied this absurd principle to the other numbers. In place of seven thousand thirteen he would say (for example) Maximo Pérez; in place of seven thousand fourteen, The Railroad; other numbers were Luis Melian Lafinur, Olimar, sulphur, the reins, the whale, the gas, the caldron, Napoleon, Agustin de Vedia. In place of five hundred, he would say nine. Each word had a particular sign, a kind of mark; the last in the series were very complicated...~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
1286:A: Absorbed in our discussion of immortality, we had let night fall without lighting the lamp, and we couldn't see each other's faces. With an offhandedness or gentleness more convincing than passion would have been, Macedonio Fernandez' voice said once more that the soul is immortal. He assured me that the death of the body is altogether insignificant, and that dying has to be the most unimportant thing that can happen to a man. I was playing with Macedonio's pocketknife, opening and closing it. A nearby accordion was infinitely dispatching La Comparsita, that dismaying trifle that so many people like because it's been misrepresented to them as being old... I suggested to Macedonio that we kill ourselves, so we might have our discussion without all that racket.
Z: (mockingly) But I suspect that at the last moment you reconsidered.
A: (now deep in mysticism) Quite frankly, I don't remember whether we committed suicide that night or not. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1287:Gradually, the concrete enigma I labored at disturbed me less than the generic enigma of a sentence written by a god. What type of sentence (I asked myself) will an absolute mind construct? I considered that even in the human languages there is no proposition that does not imply the entire universe: to say "the tiger" is to say the tigers that begot it, the deer and turtles devoured by it, the grass on which the deer fed, the earth that was mother to the grass, the heaven that gave birth to the earth. I considered that in the language of a god every word would enunciate that infinite concatenation of facts, and not in an implicit but in an explicit manner, and not progressively but instantaneously. In time, the notion of a divine sentence seemed puerile or blasphemous. A god, I reflected, ought to utter only a single word and in that word absolute fullness. No word uttered by him can be inferior to the universe or less than the sum total of time. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1288:When you read The Arabian Nights you accept Islam. You accept the fables woven by generations as if they were by one single author or, better still, as if they had no author. And in fact they have one and none. Something so worked on, so polished by generations is no longer associated with and individual. In Kafka's case, it's possible that his fables are now part of human memory. What happened to Quixote could happen to to them. Let's say that all the copies of Quixote, in Spanish and in translation, were lost. The figure of Don Quixote would remain in human memory. I think that the idea of a frightening trial that goes on forever, which is at the core of The Castle and The Trial (both books that Kafka, of course, never wanted to publish because he knew they were unfinished), is now grown infinite, is now part of human memory and can now be rewritten under different titles and feature different circumstances. Kafka's work now forms a part of human memory. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1289:He told me that in 1886 he had invented an original system of numbering and that in a very few days he had gone beyond the twenty-four-thousand mark. He had not written it down, since anything he thought of once would never be lost to him. His first stimulus was, I think, his discomfort at the fact that the famous thirty-three gauchos of Uruguayan history should require two signs and two words, in place of a single word and a single sign. He then applied this absurd principle to the other numbers. In place of seven thousand thirteen he would say (for example) Maximo Pérez; in place of seven thousand fourteen, The Railroad; other numbers were Luis Melián Lafinur, Olimar, sulphur, the reins, the whale, the gas, the caldron, Napoleon, Agustin de Vedia. In place of five hundred, he would say nine. Each word had a particular sign, a kind of mark; the last in the series were very complicated... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1290:Throughout the course of the generations
men constructed the night.
At first she was blindness;
thorns raking bare feet,
fear of wolves.
We shall never know who forged the word
for the interval of shadow
dividing the two twilights;
we shall never know in what age it came to mean
the starry hours.
Others created the myth.
They made her the mother of the unruffled Fates
that spin our destiny,
they sacrificed black ewes to her, and the cock
who crows his own death.
The Chaldeans assigned to her twelve houses;
to Zeno, infinite words.
She took shape from Latin hexameters
and the terror of Pascal.
Luis de Leon saw in her the homeland
of his stricken soul.
Now we feel her to be inexhaustible
like an ancient wine
and no one can gaze on her without vertigo
and time has charged her with eternity.
And to think that she wouldn't exist
except for those fragile instruments, the eyes.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, History Of The Night
,#NFDB
1291:Gradually, the concrete enigma I labored at disturbed me less than the generic enigma of a sentence written by a god. What type of sentence (I asked myself) will an absolute mind construct? I considered that even in the human languages there is no proposition that does not imply the entire universe: to say "the tiger" is to say the tigers that begot it, the deer and turtles devoured by it, the grass on which the deer fed, the earth that was mother to the grass, the heaven that gave birth to the earth. I considered that in the language of a god every word would enunciate that infinite concatenation of facts, and not in an implicit but in an explicit manner, and not progressively but instantaneously. In time, the notion of a divine sentence seemed puerile or blasphemous. A god, I reflected, ought to utter only a single word and in that word absolute fullness. No word uttered by him can be inferior to the universe or less than the sum total of time.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
1292:Oh destiny of Borges
to have sailed across the diverse seas of the world
or across that single and solitary sea of diverse
names,
to have been a part of Edinburgh, of Zurich, of the
two Cordobas,
of Colombia and of Texas,
to have returned at the end of changing generations
to the ancient lands of his forebears,
to Andalucia, to Portugal and to those counties
where the Saxon warred with the Dane and they
mixed their blood,
to have wandered through the red and tranquil
labyrinth of London,
to have grown old in so many mirrors,
to have sought in vain the marble gaze of the statues,
to have questioned lithographs, encyclopedias,
atlases,
to have seen the things that men see,
death, the sluggish dawn, the plains,
and the delicate stars,
and to have seen nothing, or almost nothing
except the face of a girl from Buenos Aires
a face that does not want you to remember it.
Oh destiny of Borges,
perhaps no stranger than your own.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Elegy
,#NFDB
1293:At my age, one should be aware of one's limits, and this knowledge may make for happiness. When I was young, I thought of literature as a game of skillful and surprising variations; now that I have found my own voice, I feel that tinkering and tampering neither greatly improve nor greatly spoil my drafts. This, of course, is a sin against one of the main tendencies of letters in this century--the vanity of overwriting-- ... I suppose my best work is over. This gives me a certain quiet satisfaction and ease. And yet I do not feel I have written myself out. In a way, youthfulness seems closer to me today than when I was a young man. I no longer regard happiness as unattainable; once, long ago, I did. Now I know that it may occur at any moment but that it should never be sought after. As to failure or fame, they are quite irrelevant and I never bother about them. What I'm out for now is peace, the enjoyment of thinking and of friendship, and, though it may be too ambitious, a sense of loving and of being loved. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1294:The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it we feel unhappy. A writer or any artist has the sometimes joyful duty to transform all that into symbols. These symbols could be colors, forms or sounds. For a poet, the symbols are sounds and also words, fables, stories, poetry. The work of a poet never ends. It has nothing to do with working hours. You are continuously receiving things from the external world. These must be transformed and eventually will be transformed. This revelation can appear anytime. A poet never rests. He’s always working even when he dreams. Besides, the life of a writer is a lonely one. You think you are alone as the years go by, if the stars are on your side, you may discover that you are at the center of a vast circle of invisible friends whom you will never get to know but whom love you. And that is an immense reward. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1295:One day or one night—between my days and nights, what difference can there be?—I dreamed that there was a grain of sand on the floor of my cell. Unconcerned, I went back to sleep; I dreamed that I woke up and there were two grains of sand. Again I slept; I dreamed that now there were three. Thus the grains of sand multiplied, little by little, until they filled the cell and I was dying beneath that hemisphere of sand. I realized that I was dreaming; with a vast effort I woke myself. But waking up was useless—I was suffocated by the countless sand. Someone said to me:
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 the grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.
I felt lost. The sand crushed my mouth, but I cried out: I cannot be killed by sand that I dream —nor is there any such thing as a dream within a dream.
— Jorge Luis Borges, The Writing of the God ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1296:From the twilight of day till the twilight of evening, a leopard, in the last years of the thirteenth century, would see some wooden planks, some vertical iron bars, men and women who changed, a wall and perhaps a stone gutter filled with dry leaves. He did not know, could not know, that he longed for love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing things to pieces and the wind carrying the scent of a deer, but something suffocated and rebelled within him and God spoke to him in a dream: "You live and will die in this prison so that a man I know of may see you a certain number of times and not forget you and place your figure and symbol in a poem which has its precise place in the scheme of the universe. You suffer captivity, but you will have given a word to the poem." God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and the animal understood these reasons and accepted his destiny, but, when he awoke, there was in him only an obscure resignation, a valorous ignorance, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a beast. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1297:On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph, #NFDB
1298:From the twilight of day till the twilight of evening, a leopard, in the last years of the thirteenth century, would see some wooden planks, some vertical iron bars, men and women who changed, a wall and perhaps a stone gutter filled with dry leaves. He did not know, could not know, that he longed for love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing things to pieces and the wind carrying the scent of a deer, but something suffocated and rebelled within him and God spoke to him in a dream: ""You live and will die in this prison so that a man I know of may see you a certain number of times and not forget you and place your figure and symbol in a poem which has its precise place in the scheme of the universe. You suffer captivity, but you will have given a word to the poem.
God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and the animal understood these reasons and accepted his destiny, but, when he awoke, there was in him only an obscure resignation, a valorous ignorance, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a beast. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1299:ULTIMO RESPLANDOR
Siempre es conmovedor el ocaso
por charro o indigente que sea,
pero ms conmovedor todava
es aquel brillo desesperado y final
que herrumbra la llanura
cuando en el horizonte nada recuerda
la vanagloria del poniente.
Nos duele sostener esa luz tirante y distinta,
que es una alucinacin que impone al espacio
el unnime miedo de la sombra
y que cesa de golpe
cuando notamos su falsa,
como se desbarata un sueo
cuando el soador advierte que duerme.
AFTERGLOW
Sunset is always disturbing
whether theatrical or muted,
but still more disturbing
is that last desperate glow
that turns the plain to rust
when on the horizon nothing is left
of the pomp and clamor of the setting sun.
How hard holding on to that light, so tautly drawn
and different,
that hallucination which the human fear of the dark
imposes on space
and which ceases at once
the moment we realize its falsity,
the way a dream is broken
the moment the sleeper knows he is dreaming.
[Norman Thomas di Giovanni]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Afterglow
,#NFDB
1300:The Palace
The Palace is not infinite.
The walls, the ramparts, the gardens, the labyrinths, the staircases, the terraces, the parapets, the doors, the galleries, the circular or rectangular patios, the cloisters, the intersections, the cisterns, the anterooms, the chambers, the alcoves, the libraries, the attics, the dungeons, the sealed cells and the vaults, are not less in quantity than the grains of sand in the Ganges, but their number has a limit. From the roofs, towards sunset, many people can make out the forges, the workshops, the stables, the boatyards and the huts of the slaves.
It is granted to no one to traverse more than an infinitesimal part of the palace. Some know only the cellars. We can take in some faces, some voices, some words, but what we perceive is of the feeblest. Feeble and precious at the same time. The date which the chisel engraves in the tablet, and which is recorded in the parochial registers, is later than our own death; we are already dead when nothing touches us, neither a word nor a yearning nor a memory. I know that I am not dead. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand,#NFDB
1301:EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
Taller than the others, this man
Walked, among them, at a distance,
Now and then calling the angels
By their secret names. He would see
That which earthly eyes do not see:
The fierce geometry, the crystal
Labyrinth of God and the sordid
Milling of infernal delights.
He knew that Glory and Hell too
Are in your soul, with all their myths;
He knew, like the Greek, that the days
Of time are Eternitys mirrors.
In dry Latin he went on listing
The unconditional Last Things.
[Richard Howard and Csar Rennert]
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
Ms alto que los otros, caminaba
Aquel hombre lejano entre los hombres;
Apenas si llamaba por sus nombres
Secretos a los ngeles. Miraba
Lo que no ven los ojos terrenales:
La ardiente geometra, el cristalino
Laberinto de Dios y el remolino
Srdido de los goces infernales.
Saba que la Gloria y el Averno
En tu alma estn y sus mitologas;
Saba, como el griego, que los das
Del tiempo son espejos del Eterno.
En rido latn fue registrando
Ultimas cosas sin por qu ni cuando.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Emanuel Swedenborg
,#NFDB
1302:He had no document but his memory; the training he had acquired with each added hexameter gave him a discipline unsuspected by those who set down and forget temporary, incomplete paragraphs. He was not working for posterity or even for God, whose literary tastes were unknown to him. Meticulously, motionlessly, secretly, he wrought in time his lofty, invisible labyrinth. He worked the third act over twice. He eliminated certain symbols as over-obvious, such as the repeated striking of the clock, the music. Nothing hurried him. He omitted, he condensed, he amplified. In certain instances he came back to the original version. He came to feel affection for the courtyard, the barracks; one of the faces before him modified his conception of Roemerstadt's character. He discovered that the wearying cacophonies that bothered Flaubert so much are mere visual superstitions, weakness and limitation of the written word, not the spoken...He concluded his drama. He had only the problem of a single phrase. He found it. The drop of water slid down his cheek. He opened his mouth in a maddened cry, moved his face, dropped under the quadruple blast. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1303:SPINOZA
Las traslcidas manos del judo
Labran en la penumbra los cristales
Y la tarde que muere es miedo y fro.
(Las tardes a las tardes son iguales.)
Las manos y el espacio de jacinto
Que palidece en el confn del Ghetto
Casi no existen para el hombre quieto
Que est soando un claro laberinto.
No lo turba la fama, ese reflejo
De sueos en el sueo de otro espejo,
Ni el temeroso amor de las doncellas.
Libre de la metfora y del mito
Labra un arduo cristal: el infinito
Mapa de Aqul que es todas Sus estrellas.
SPINOZA
The Jews hands, translucent in the dusk,
Polish the lenses time and again.
The dying afternoon is fear, is
Cold, and all afternoons are the same.
The hands and the hyacinth-blue air
That whitens at the Ghetto edges
Do not quite exist for this silent
Man who conjures up a clear labyrinth
Undisturbed by fame, that reflection
Of dreams in the dream of another
Mirror, nor by maidens timid love.
Free of metaphor and myth, he grinds
A stubborn crystal: the infinite
Map of the One who is all His stars.
[Richard Howard and Csar Rennert]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Spinoza
,#NFDB
1304:To gaze at a river made of time and water
And remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.
To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.
To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.
To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadnesssuch is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.
Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.
They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.
Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Art Of Poetry
,#NFDB
1305:Funes discernía continuamente los tranquilos avances de la corrupción, de las caries, de la fatiga. Notaba los progresos de la muerte, de la humedad. Era el solitario y lúcido espectador de un mundo multiforme, instantáneo y casi intolerablemente preciso. Babilonia, Londres y Nueva York han abrumado con feroz esplendor la imaginación de los hombres; nadie, en sus torres populosas o en sus avenidas urgentes, ha sentido el calor y la presión de una realidad tan infatigable como la que día y noche convergía sobre el infeliz Ireneo, en su pobre arrabal sudamericano. Le era muy difícil dormir. Dormir es distraerse del mundo; Funes, de espaldas en el catre, en la sombra, se figuraba cada grieta y cada moldura de las casas precisas que lo rodeaban. (Repito que el menos importante de sus recuerdos era más minucioso y más vivo que nuestra percepción de un goce físico o de un tormento físico.) Hacia el Este, en un trecho no amanzanado, había casas nuevas, desconocidas. Funes las imaginaba negras, compactas, hechas de tiniebla homogénea; en esa dirección volvía la cara para dormir. También solía imaginarse en el fondo del río, mecido y anulado por la corriente. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1306:Someone
A man worn down by time,
a man who does not even expect death
(the proofs of death are statistics
and everyone runs the risk
of being the first immortal),
a man who has learned to express thanks
for the days' modest alms:
sleep, routine, the taste of water,
an unsuspected etymology,
a Latin or Saxon verse,
the memory of a woman who left him
thirty years ago now
whom he can call to mind without bitterness,
a man who is aware that the present
is both future and oblivion,
a man who has betrayed
and has been betrayed,
may feel suddenly, when crossing the street,
a mysterious happiness
not coming from the side of hope
but from an ancient innocence,
from his own root or from some diffuse god.
He knows better than to look at it closely,
for there are reasons more terrible than tigers
which will prove to him
that wretchedness is his duty,
but he accepts humbly
this felicity, this glimmer.
Perhaps in death when the dust
is dust, we will be forever
this undecipherable root,
from which will grow forever,
serene or horrible,
or solitary heaven or hell. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1307:You Learn (by Jorge Luis Borges)
The poverty of yesterday was less squalid than the poverty we purchase with our industry today.
Fortunes were smaller then as well.
(The Elderly Lady)
After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn…
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure…
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth…
And you learn and learn…
With every good-bye you learn.
{…} ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1308:Eğer, yeniden başlayabilseydim yaşamaya,
İkincisinde, daha çok hata yapardım.
Kusursuz olmaya çalışmaz, sırtüstü yatardım.
Neşeli olurdum, ilkinde olmadığım kadar,
Çok az şeyi
Ciddiyetle yapardım.
Temizlik sorun bile olmazdı asla.
Daha çok riske girerdim.
Seyahat ederdim daha fazla.
Daha çok güneş doğuşu izler,
Daha çok dağa tırmanır, daha çok nehirde yüzerdim.
Görmediğim bir çok yere giderdim.
Dondurma yerdim doyasıya ve daha az bezelye.
Gerçek sorunlarım olurdu hayali olanların yerine.
Yaşamın her anını gerçek ve verimli kılan insanlardandım ben.
Yeniden başlayabilseydim eğer, yalnız mutlu anlarım olurdu.
Farkında mısınız bilmem. Yaşam budur zaten.
Anlar, sadece anlar. Siz de anı yaşayın.
Hiçbir yere yanında termometre, su, şemsiye ve paraşüt almadan,
Gitmeyen insanlardandım ben.
Yeniden başlayabilseydim eğer, hiçbir şey taşımazdım.
Eğer yeniden başlayabilseydim,
İlkbaharda pabuçlarımı fırlatır atardım.
Ve sonbahar bitene kadar yürürdüm çıplak ayaklarla.
Bilinmeyen yollar keşfeder, güneşin tadına varır,
Çocuklarla oynardım, bir şansım olsaydı eğer.
Ama işte 85'indeyim ve biliyorum…
Ölüyorum… ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1309:He had no document but his memory; the training he had acquired with each added hexameter gave him a discipline unsuspected by those who set down and forget temporary, incomplete paragraphs. He was not working for posterity or even for God, whose literary tastes were unknown to him. Meticulously, motionlessly, secretly, he wrought in time his lofty, invisible labyrinth. He worked the third act over twice. He eliminated certain symbols as over-obvious, such as the repeated striking of the clock, the music. Nothing hurried him. He omitted, he condensed, he amplified. In certain instances he came back to the original version. He came to feel affection for the courtyard, the barracks; one of the faces before him modified his conception of Roemerstadt's character. He discovered that the wearying cacophonies that bothered Flaubert so much are mere visual superstitions, weakness and limitation of the written word, not the spoken...He concluded his drama. He had only the problem of a single phrase. He found it. The drop of water slid down his cheek. He opened his mouth in a maddened cry, moved his face, dropped under the quadruple blast.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings, #NFDB
1310:ADAM CAST FORTH
Hubo un Jardn o fue el Jardn un sueo?
Lento en la vaga luz, me he preguntado,
Casi como un consuelo, si el pasado
De que este Adn, hoy msero, era dueo,
No fue sino una mgica impostura
De aquel Dios que so. Ya es impreciso
En la memoria el claro Paraso,
Pero yo s que existe y que perdura,
Aunque no para m. La terca tierra
Es mi castigo y la incestuosa guerra
De Canes y Abeles y su cra.
Y, sin embargo, es mucho haber amado,
Haber sido feliz, haber tocado
El viviente Jardn, siquiera un da.
ADAM CAST FORTH
The Gardenwas it real or was it dream?
Slow in the hazy light, I have been asking,
Almost as a comfort, if the past
Belonging to this now unhappy Adam
Was nothing but a magic fantasy
Of that God I dreamed. Now it is imprecise
In memory, that lucid paradise,
But I know it exists and will persist
Though not for me. The unforgiving earth
Is my affliction, and the incestuous wars
Of Cains and Abels and their progeny.
Nevertheless, it means much to have loved,
To have been happy, to have touched upon
The living Garden, even for one day.
[Alastair Reid]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Adam Cast Forth
,#NFDB
1311:It is love. I will have to run or hide.
The walls of its prison rise up, as in a twisted dream. The beautiful mask has changed, but as always it is the one. Of what use are my talismans: the literary exercises, the vague erudition, the knowledge of words used by the harsh North to sing its seas and swords, the temperate friendship, the galleries of the Library, the common things, the habits, the young love of my mother, the militant shadow of my dead, the timeless night, the taste of dreams?
Being with you or being without you is the measure of my time.
Now the pitcher breaks about the spring, now the man arises to the sound of birds, now those that watch at the windows have gone dark, but the darkness has brought no peace.
It, I know, is love: the anxiety and the relief at hearing your voice, the expectation and the memory, the horror of living in succession.
It is love with its mythologies, with its tiny useless magics.
There exists a corner that I dare not cross.
Now the armies confine me, the hordes.
(This room is unreal; she has not seen it.)
The name of a woman gives me away.
A woman hurts me in all of my body. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1312:Oh days devoted to the useless burden
of putting out of mind the biography
of a minor poet of the Southem Hemisphere,
to whom the fates or perhaps the stars have given
a body which will leave behind no child,
and blindness, which is semi-darkness and jail,
and old age, which is the dawn of death,
and fame, which absolutely nobody deserves,
and the practice of weaving hendecasyllables,
and an old love of encyclopedias
and fine handmade maps and smooth ivory,
and an incurable nostalgia for the Latin,
and bits of memories of Edinburgh and Geneva
and the loss of memory of names and dates,
and the cult of the East, which the varied peoples
of the teeming East do not themselves share,
and evening trembling with hope or expectation,
and the disease of entomology,
and the iron of Anglo-Saxon syllables,
and the moon, that always catches us by surprise,
and that worse of all bad habits, Buenos Aires,
and the subtle flavor of water, the taste of grapes,
and chocolate, oh Mexican delicacy,
and a few coins and an old hourglass,
and that an evening, like so many others,
be given over to these lines of verse.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, That One
,#NFDB
1313:LOS ENIGMAS
Yo que soy el que ahora est cantando
Ser maana el misterioso, el muerto,
El morador de un mgico y desierto
Orbe sin antes ni despus ni cuando.
As afirma la mstica. Me creo
Indigno del Infierno o de la Gloria,
Pero nada predigo. Nuestra historia
Cambia como las formas de Proteo.
Qu errante laberinto, qu blancura
Ciega de resplandor ser mi suerte,
Cuando me entregue el fin de esta aventura
La curiosa experiencia de la muerte?
Quiero beber su cristalino Olvido,
Ser para siempre; pero no haber sido.
THE ENIGMAS
I who am singing these lines today
Will be tomorrow the enigmatic corpse
Who dwells in a realm, magical and barren,
Without a before or an after or a when.
So say the mystics. I say I believe
Myself undeserving of Heaven or of Hell,
But make no predictions. Each mans tale
Shifts like the watery forms of Proteus.
What errant labyrinth, what blinding flash
Of splendor and glory shall become my fate
When the end of this adventure presents me with
The curious experience of death?
I want to drink its crystal-pure oblivion,
To be forever; but never to have been.
[John Updike]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Enigmas
,#NFDB
1314:« Dans nos écoles on nous enseigne le doute et l’art d’oublier. Avant tout l’oubli de ce qui est personnel et localisé. »
« — Personne ne peut lire deux mille livres. Depuis quatre siècles que je vis je n’ai pas dû en lire plus d’une demi-douzaine. D’ailleurs ce qui importe ce n’est pas de lire mais de relire. L’imprimerie, maintenant abolie, a été l’un des pires fléaux de l’humanité, car elle a tendu à multiplier jusqu’au vertige des textes inutiles.
— De mon temps à moi, hier encore, répondis-je, triomphait la superstition que du jour au lendemain il se passait des événements qu’on aurait eu honte d’ignorer. »
« — À cent ans, l’être humain peut se passer de l’amour et de l’amitié. Les maux et la mort involontaire ne sont plus une menace pour lui. Il pratique un art quelconque, il s’adonne à la philosophie, aux mathématiques ou bien il joue aux échecs en solitaire. Quand il le veut, il se tue. Maître de sa vie, l’homme l’est aussi de sa mort[30].
— Il s’agit d’une citation ? lui demandai-je.
— Certainement. Il ne nous reste plus que des citations. Le langage est un système de citations. »
Extrait de: Borges,J.L. « Le livre de sable. » / Utopie d’un homme qui est fatigué ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1315:EMERSON
Ese alto caballero americano
Cierra el volumen de Montaigne y sale
En busca de otro goce que no vale
Menos, la tarde que ya exalta el llano.
Hacia el hondo poniente y su declive,
Hacia el confn que ese poniente dora,
Camina por los campos como ahora
Por la memoria de quien esto escribe.
Piensa: Le los libros esenciales
Y otros compuse que el oscuro olvido
No ha de borrar. Un dios me ha concedido
Lo que es dado saber a los mortales.
Por todo el continente anda mi nombre;
No he vivido. Quisiera ser otro hombre.
EMERSON
Closing the heavy volume of Montaigne,
The tall New Englander goes out
Into an evening which exalts the fields.
It is a pleasure worth no less than reading.
He walks toward the final sloping of the sun,
Toward the landscapes gilded edge;
He moves through darkening fields as he moves now
Through the memory of the one who writes this down.
He thinks: I have read the essential books
And written others which oblivion
Will not efface. I have been allowed
That which is given mortal man to know.
The whole continent knows my name.
I have not lived. I want to be someone else.
[Mark Strand
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Emerson
,#NFDB
1316:OEDIPUS AND THE RIDDLE
At dawn four-footed, at midday erect,
And wandering on three legs in the deserted
Spaces of afternoon, thus the eternal
Sphinx had envisioned her changing brother
Man, and with afternoon there came a person
Deciphering, appalled at the monstrous other
Presence in the mirror, the reflection
Of his decay and of his destiny.
We are Oedipus; in some eternal way
We are the long and threefold beast as well
All that we will be, all that we have been.
It would annihilate us all to see
The huge shape of our being; mercifully
God offers us issue and oblivion.
[John Hollander]
EDIPO Y EL ENIGMA
Cuadrpedo en la aurora, alto en el da
Y con tres pies errando por el vano
Ambito de la tarde, as vea
La eterna esfinge a su inconstante hermano,
El hombre, y con la tarde un hombre vino
Que descifr aterrado en el espejo
De la monstruosa imagen, el reflejo
De su declinacin y su destino.
Somos Edipo y de un eterno modo
La larga y triple bestia somos, todo
Lo que seremos y lo que hemos sido.
Nos aniquilara ver la ingente
Forma de nuestro ser; piadosamente
Dios nos depara sucesin y olvido.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Oedipus and the Riddle
,#NFDB
1317:EVERNESS
Slo una cosa no hay. Es el olvido.
Dios, que salva el metal, salva la escoria
Y cifra en Su proftica memoria
Las lunas que sern y las que han sido.
Ya todo est. Los miles de reflejos
Que entre los dos crepsculos del da
Tu rostro fue dejando en los espejos
Y los que ir dejando todava.
Y todo es una parte del diverso
Cristal de esa memoria, el universo;
No tienen fin sus arduos corredores
Y las puertas se cierran a tu paso;
Slo del otro lado del ocaso
Vers los Arquetipos y Esplendores.
EVERNESS
One thing does not exist: Oblivion.
God saves the metal and he saves the dross,
And his prophetic memory guards from loss
The moons to come, and those of evenings gone.
Everything is: the shadows in the glass
Which, in between the days two twilights, you
Have scattered by the thousands, or shall strew
Henceforward in the mirrors that you pass.
And everything is part of that diverse
Crystalline memory, the universe;
Whoever through its endless mazes wanders
Hears door on door click shut behind his stride,
And only from the sunsets farther side
Shall view at last the Archetypes and the Splendors.
[Richard Wilbur]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Everness
,#NFDB
1318:Al idioma Alemán
Mi destino es la lengua castellana,
El bronce de Francisco de Quevedo,
Pero en la lenta noche caminada,
Me exaltan otras músicas más íntimas.
Alguna me fue dada por la sangre-
Oh voz de Shakespeare y de la Escritura,
Otras por el azar, que es dadivoso,
Pero a ti, dulce lengua de Alemania,
Te he elegido y buscado, solitario.
A través de vigilias y gramáticas,
De la jungla de las declinaciones,
Del diccionario, que no acierta nunca
Con el matiz preciso, fui acercándome.
Mis noches están llenas de Virgilio,
Dije una vez; también pude haber dicho
de Hölderlin y de Angelus Silesius.
Heine me dio sus altos ruiseñores;
Goethe, la suerte de un amor tardío,
A la vez indulgente y mercenario;
Keller, la rosa que una mano deja
En la mano de un muerto que la amaba
Y que nunca sabrá si es blanca o roja.
Tú, lengua de Alemania, eres tu obra
Capital: el amor entrelazado
de las voces compuestas, las vocales
Abiertas, los sonidos que permiten
El estudioso hexámetro del griego
Y tu rumor de selvas y de noches.
Te tuve alguna vez. Hoy, en la linde
De los años cansados, te diviso
Lejana como el álgebra y la luna. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1319:To the Nightingale
On what secret night in England
Or by the incalculable constant Rhine,
Lost among all the nights of my nights,
Carried to my unknowing ear
Your voice, burdened with mythology,
Nightingale of Virgil, of the Persians?
Perhaps I never heard you, yet my life
I bound to your life, inseparably.
A wandering spirit is your symbol
In a book of enigmas. El Marino
Named you the siren of the woods
And you sing through Juliet’s night
And in the intricate Latin pages
And from the pine-trees of that other,
Nightingale of Germany and Judea,
Heine, mocking, burning, mourning.
Keats heard you for all, everywhere.
There’s not one of the bright names
The people of the earth have given you
That does not yearn to match your music,
Nightingale of shadows. The Muslim
Dreamed you drunk with ecstasy
His breast trans-pierced by the thorn
Of the sung rose that you redden
With your last blood. Assiduously
I plot these lines in twilight emptiness,
Nightingale of the shores and seas,
Who in exaltation, memory and fable
Burn with love and die melodiously. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1320:I arrive now at the ineffable core of my story. And here begins my despair as a writer. All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past. How, then, can I translate into words the limitless Aleph, which my floundering mind can scarcely encompass? Mystics, faced with the same problem, fall back on symbols: to signify the godhead, one Persian speaks of a bird that somehow is all birds; Alanus de Insulis, of a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere; Ezekiel, of a four-faced angel who at one and the same time moves east and west, north and south. (Not in vain do I recall these inconceivable analogies; they bear some relation to the Aleph.) Perhaps the gods might grant me a similar metaphor, but then this account would become contaminated by literature, by fiction. Really, what I want to do is impossible, for any listing of an endless series is doomed to be infinitesimal. In that single gigantic instant I saw millions of acts both delightful and awful; not one of them occupied the same point in space, without overlapping or transparency. What my eyes beheld was simultaneous, but what I shall now write down will be successive, because language is successive. Nonetheless, I'll try to recollect what I can. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1321:When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future. Thousands of the greedy abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed up the stairways, urged on by the vain intention of finding their Vindication. These pilgrims disputed in the narrow corridors, proffered dark curses, strangled each other on the divine stairways, flung the deceptive books into the air shafts, met their death cast down in a similar fashion by the inhabitants of remote regions. Others went mad ... The Vindications exist (I have seen two which refer to persons of the future, to persons who are perhaps not imaginary) but the searchers did not remember that the possibility of a man's finding his Vindication, or some treacherous variation thereof, can be computed as zero. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1322:EL AMENAZADO
Es el amor. Tendré que ocultarme o
que huir.
Crecen los muros de su cárcel, como
en un sueño atroz. La
hermosa máscara ha cambiado, pero
como siempre es la única.
¿De qué me servirán mis talismanes:
el ejercicio de las letras,
la vaga erudición, el aprendizaje de
las palabras que usó el
áspero Norte para cantar sus mares
y sus espadas, la serena
amistad, las galerías de la Biblioteca,
las cosas comunes, los
hábitos, el joven amor de mi madre,
la sombra militar de mis
muertos, la noche intemporal, el
sabor del sueño?
Estar contigo o no estar contigo es la
medida de mi tiempo.
Ya el cántaro se quiebra sobre la
fuente, ya el hombre se
levanta a la voz del ave, ya se han
oscurecido los que miran
por las ventanas, pero la sombra no
ha traído la paz.
Es, ya lo sé, el amor: la ansiedad y el
alivio de oír tu voz,
la espera y la memoria, el horror de
vivir en lo sucesivo.
Es el amor con sus mitología, con
sus pequeñas magias inútiles.
Hay una esquina por la que no me
atrevo a pasar.
Ya los ejércitos me cercan, las
hordas.
(Esta habitación es irreal; ella no la
ha visto.)
El nombre de una mujer me delata.
Me duele una mujer en todo el
cuerpo. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1323:DESPEDIDA
Entre mi amor y yo han de levantarse
trescientas noches como trescientas paredes
y el mar ser una magia entre nosotros.
El tiempo arrancar con dura mano
las calles enzarzadas en mi pecho.
No habr sino recuerdos.
(Oh tardes merecidas por la pena,
noches esperanzadas de mirarte,
campos desalentados, pobre cielo
humillado en la hondura de los charcos
como un ngel cado . . .
Y tu vivir que agracia mis anhelos
y ese barrio dejado y placentero
que hoy en luz de mi amor se resplandece . . .)
Definitiva como una estatua
entristecer tu ausencia otros campos.
PARTING
Three hundred nights like three hundred walls
must rise between my love and me
and the sea will be a black art between us.
Time with a hard hand will tear out
the streets tangled in my breast.
Nothing will be left but memories.
(O afternoons earned with suffering,
nights hoping for the sight of you,
dejected vacant lots, poor sky
shamed in the bottom of the puddles
like a fallen angel. . . .
And your life that graces my desire
and that run-down and lighthearted neighborhood
shining today in the glow of my love. . . .)
Final as a statue
your absence will sadden other fields.
[W. S. Merwin]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Parting
,#NFDB
1324:REMORDIMIENTO POR CUALQUIER
DEFUNCION
Libre de la memoria y de la esperanza,
ilimitado, abstracto, casi futuro,
el muerto no es un muerto: es la muerte.
Como el Dios de los msticos,
de quien deben negarse todos los predicados,
el muerto ubicuamente ajeno
no es sino la perdicin y ausencia del mundo.
Todo se lo robamos,
no le dejamos ni un color ni una slaba:
aqu est el patio que ya no comparten sus ojos,
all la acera donde acech su esperanza.
Hasta lo que pensamos
podra estarlo pensando l tambin;
nos hemos repartido como ladrones
el asombroso caudal de noches y das.
REMORSE FOR ANY DEATH
Free of memory and hope,
unlimited, abstract, almost future,
the dead person is not a dead person: it is death.
Like the God of the mystics,
whom they insist has no attributes,
the dead person, everywhere no one,
is nothing but the loss and absence of the world.
We rob it of everything,
we do not leave it one color, one syllable:
here is the yard which its eyes no longer take up,
there is the sidewalk where it waylaid its hope.
Even what we are thinking
it might be thinking too;
we have shared out like thieves
the amazing treasure of nights and days.
[W. S. Merwin]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Remorse for any Death
,#NFDB
1325:ELEGIJA O NEMOGUĆOJ USPOMENI
Šta ne bih dao za sećanje
na prašnjav puteljak sa niskim ogradama
i visokog konjanika što zoru ispunjava
(pohaban dugački pončo)
jednog dana među danima ravnice,
jednog dana bez datuma.
Šta ne bih dao za sećanje
na majku koja posmatra jutro
na estansiji Svete Irene
a ne zna da će se zvati Borhes.
Šta ne bih dao za sećanje
da sam se borio kod Sepede
i video Estanislaa Del Kampa
kako pozdravlja prvi kuršum
s radošću hrabra čoveka.
Šta ne bih dao za sećanje
na kapiju skrivenog letnjikovca
koju je moj otac svake večeri zatvarao
pre no što bi se izgubio u snu
i koju je zatvorio poslednji put
četrnaestog februara 38.
Šta ne bih dao za sećanje
na Hengistove čunove
koji kreću sa peščanih obala Danske
da osvoje ostrvo
koje još Engleska ne beše.
Šta ne bih dao za sećanje
(imao sam ga i izgubio)
na jedno zlatasto Tarnerovo platno
široko kao muzika.
Šta ne bih dao za sećanje
da sam čuo Sokrata
kad je pred veče kukute
s vedrinom ispitivao problem
besmrtnosti,
naizmenično navodeći mitove i razloge
dok se plava smrt penjala
iz već studenih nogu.
Šta ne bih dao za sećanje
da si mi rekla da me voliš
i da nisam spavao do zore,
bestidan i srećan. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1326:If I could live again my life,
In the next – I’ll try,
- to make more mistakes,
I won’t try to be so perfect,
I’ll be more relaxed,
I’ll be more full – than I am now,
In fact, I’ll take fewer things seriously,
I’ll be less hygienic,
I’ll take more risks,
I’ll take more trips,
I’ll watch more sunsets,
I’ll climb more mountains,
I’ll swim more rivers,
I’ll go to more places – I’ve never been,
I’ll eat more ice creams and less lima beans,
I’ll have more real problems – and less imaginary ones,
I was one of those people who live
prudent and prolific lives -
each minute of his life,
Of course that I had moments of joy – but,
if I could go back I’ll try to have only good moments,
If you don’t know – that’s what life is made of,
Don’t lose the now!
I was one of those who never goes anywhere
without a thermometer,
without a hot-water bottle,
and without an umbrella and without a parachute,
If I could live again – I will travel light,
If I could live again – I’ll try to work bare feet
at the beginning of spring till the end of autumn,
I’ll ride more carts,
I’ll watch more sunrises and play with more children,
If I have the life to live – but now I am 85,
- and I know that I am dying … ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1327:Kad bih svoj život mogao ponovo da proživim
pokušao bih u sledećem da napravim više grešaka,
ne bih se trudio da budem tako savršen,
opustio bih se više.
Bio bih gluplji nego što bejah,
zaista, vrlo malo stvari bih ozbiljno shvatao.
Bio bih manji čistunac.
Više bih se izlagao opasnostima,
više putovao,
više sutona posmatrao,
na više planina se popeo
više reka preplivao.
Išao bih na još više mesta
na koja nikada nisam otišao,
jeo manje boba, a više sladoleda,
imao više stvarnih, a manje izmišljenih problema.
Ja sam bio jedan od onih
što je razumno i plodno proživeo
svaki minut svog života:
imao sam, jasno, i časaka radosti.
Ali kad bih mogao nazad da se vratim
težio bih samo dobrim trenucima.
Jer, ako ne znate, život je od toga sačinjen,
od trenova samo; nemoj propuštati sada.
Ja sam bio od onih što nikada nikuda nisu išli
bez toplomera, termofora, kišobrana i padobrana.
Kad bih opet mogao da živim
lakše bih putovao.
Kada bih ponovo mogao da živim
s proleća bih počeo bosonog da hodam
i tako išao do kraja jeseni.
Više bih se na vrtešci okretao,
više sutona posmatrao, sa više se dece igrao,
kada bih život ponovo pred sobom imao.
Ali, vidite,
imam 85 godina,
i znam
da umirem. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1328:I
Set in their studious comers, the players
Move the gradual pieces. Until dawn
The chessboard keeps them in its strict confinement
With its two colors set at daggers drawn.
Within the game itself the forms give off
Their magic rules: Homeric castle, knight
Swift to attack, queen warlike, king decisive,
Slanted bishop, and attacking pawns.
Eventually, when the players have withdrawn,
When time itself has finally consumed them,
The ritual certainly will not be done.
It was in the East this war took fire.
Today the whole earth is its theater.
Like the game of love, this game goes on forever.
II
Faint-hearted king, sly bishop, ruthless queen,
Straightforward castle, and deceitful pawn
Over the checkered black and white terrain
They seek out and begin their armed campaign.
They do not know it is the players hand
That dominates and guides their destiny.
They do not know an adamantine fate
Controls their will and lays the battle plan.
The player too is captive of caprice
(The words are Omars) on another ground
Where black nights alternate with whiter days.
God moves the player, he in turn the piece.
But what god beyond God begins the round
Of dust and time and sleep and agonies?
[Alastair Reid ]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Chess
,#NFDB
1329:If I could live again my life,
In the next - I'll try,
- to make more mistakes,
I won't try to be so perfect,
I'll be more relaxed,
I'll be more full - than I am now,
In fact, I'll take fewer things seriously,
I'll be less hygenic,
I'll take more risks,
I'll take more trips,
I'll watch more sunsets,
I'll climb more mountains,
I'll swim more rivers,
I'll go to more places - I've never been,
I'll eat more ice creams and less (lime) beans,
I'll have more real problems - and less imaginary
ones,
I was one of those people who live
prudent and prolific lives -
each minute of his life,
Offcourse that I had moments of joy - but,
if I could go back I'll try to have only good moments,
If you don't know - thats what life is made of,
Don't lose the now!
I was one of those who never goes anywhere
without a thermometer,
without a hot-water bottle,
and without an umberella and without a parachute,
If I could live again - I will travel light,
If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feet
at the beginning of spring till
the end of autumn,
I'll ride more carts,
I'll watch more sunrises and play with more children,
If I have the life to live - but now I am 85,
- and I know that I am dying ...
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Instants
,#NFDB
1330:UNKNOWN STREET
Twilight of the dove
the Hebrews called the beginning of evening
when the shadow does not mire the footsteps
and the coming of night is recognized
like an awaited music,
not as a symbol of our essential insignificance.
In that hour of fine sandy light
my footsteps found a street I did not know
opening as though
onto a noble sweep of terrace,
disclosing on cornices and walls
colors as soft as the sky itself
that moved the background.
Everythingfrank mediocrity of the plain houses,
playfulness of little columns and knockers,
perhaps a girls hope from the window railings
entered my vain heart
with the clarity of a tear.
That may have been the one hour
ever to enhance the street with a spell,
giving it privileges of tenderness,
making it real like a legend or a verse;
what is certain is that I felt it remotely near,
like a memory which arrives exhausted
only because it has come from the depths of the soul.
Miracle of the glowing street,
intimate and deeply stirring;
and only afterward
I realized that that place was strange,
that every house is a candelabra
where the lives burn each in its separate flame,
that each of our unthinking footsteps
makes its way over the Golgothas of others.
[W. S. Merwin]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Unknown Street
,#NFDB
1331:In these red labyrinths of London
I find that I have chosen
the strangest of all callings,
save that, in its way, any calling is strange.
Like the alchemist
who sought the philosopher's stone
in quicksilver,
I shall make everyday words
the gambler's marked cards, the common coin
give off the magic that was their
when Thor was both the god and the din,
the thunderclap and the prayer.
In today's dialect
I shall say, in my fashion, eternal things:
I shall try to be worthy
of the great echo of Byron.
This dust that I am will be invulnerable.
If a woman shares my love
my verse will touch the tenth sphere of the concentric heavens;
if a woman turns my love aside
I will make of my sadness a music,
a full river to resound through time.
I shall live by forgetting myself.
I shall be the face I glimpse and forget,
I shall be Judas who takes on
the divine mission of being a betrayer,
I shall be Caliban in his bog,
I shall be a mercenary who dies
without fear and without faith,
I shall be Polycrates, who looks in awe
upon the seal returned by fate.
I will be the friend who hates me.
The persian will give me the nightingale, and Rome the sword.
Masks, agonies, resurrections
will weave and unweave my life,
and in time I shall be Robert Browning.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Browning Decides To Be A Poet
,#NFDB
1332:Od pierwszego Adama, który ujrzał noc,
I dzień, i kształt swojej dłoni,
Ludzie snuli opowieści i utrwalali
W kamieniu, w metalu czy na pergaminie
To wszystko, co zawiera ziemia czy co tworzy sen.
Oto ich dzieło: Biblioteka.
Powiadają, że liczba jej woluminów
Przekracza liczbę ciał niebieskich
Czy ziaren piasku na pustyni. Człowiek,
Co chce ją wyczerpać,
Traci rozum i zuchwałe oczy.
Zawarta jest tu rozległa pamięć wieków
Minionych, miecze i bohaterowie,
Lakoniczne symbole algebry,
Wiedza, co sonduje planety
Rządzące przeznaczeniem,
Moce ziół i talizmanów ze słoniowej kości,
Wiersz, w którym trwa pieszczota,
Nauka, co rozszyfrowuje samotny
Labirynt Boga - teologia,
Alchemia, która w błocie szuka złota,
I formy wyobrażeń bałwochwalcy.
Niewierni twierdzą, że gdyby spłonęła,
Spłonęłaby historia. Lecz się mylą.
Te nieskończone księgi zostały spłodzone
Przez ludzką bezsenność. Jeśliby z nich wszystkich
Nie ocalała ani jedna, bezsenność
Spłodzi na nowo każdy wers i każdą kartę,
Wszystkie prace i każdą miłość Heraklesa,
Każdą lekcję każdego manuskryptu.
Teraz, w pierwszym stuleciu Hidżry,
Ja, ów Omar, co ujarzmił Persów
I narzuca Islam kuli ziemskiej,
Rozkazuję żołnierzom, by zniszczyli ogniem
Rozległą Bibliotekę,
Co nie zginie. Niech będzie pochwalony
Bóg, który nie śpi, i Muhammad, Prorok. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1333:INSCRIPCION EN CUALQUIER SEPULCRO
No arriesgue el mrmol temerario
grrulas infracciones al todopoder del olvido,
rememorando con prolijidad
el nombre, la opinin, los acontecimientos, la
patria.
Tanto abalorio bien adjudicado est a la tiniebla
y el mrmol no hable lo que callan los hombres.
Lo esencial de la vida fenecida
la trmula esperanza,
el milagro implacable del dolor y el asombro del
goce
siempre perdurar.
Ciegamente reclama duracin el alma arbitraria
cuando la tiene asegurada en vidas ajenas,
cuando t mismo eres la continuacin realizada
de quienes no alcanzaron tu tiempo
y otros sern (y son) tu inmortalidad en la tierra.
INSCRIPTION ON ANY TOMB
Let not the rash marble risk
garrulous breaches of oblivions omnipotence,
in many words recalling
name, renown, events, birthplace.
All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.
Let not the marble say what men do not.
The essentials of the dead mans life
the trembling hope,
the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual
delight
will abide forever.
Blindly the willful soul asks for length of days
when its survival is assured by the lives of others,
when you yourself are the embodied continuance
of those who did not live into your time
and others will be (and are) your immortality on
earth.
[W. S. Merwin]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Inscription on any Tomb
,#NFDB
1334:LLANEZA
A Hayde Lange
Se abre la verja del jardn
con la docilidad de la pgina
que una frecuente devocin interroga
y adentro las miradas
no precisan fijarse en los objetos
que ya estn cabalmente en la memoria.
Conozco las costumbres y las almas
y ese dialecto de alusiones
que toda agrupacin humana va urdiendo.
No necesito hablar
ni mentir privilegios;
bien me conocen quienes aqu me rodean,
bien saben mis congojas y mi flaqueza.
Eso es alcanzar lo ms alto,
lo que tal vez nos dar el Cielo:
no admiraciones ni victorias
sino sencillamente ser admitidos
como parte de una Realidad innegable,
como las piedras y los rboles.
PLAINNESS
To Hayde Lange
The gardens grillwork gate
opens with the ease of a page
in a much-thumbed book,
and, once inside, our eyes
have no need to dwell on objects
already fixed and exact in memory.
Here habits and minds and the private language
all families invent
are everyday things to me.
What necessity is there to speak
or pretend to be someone else?
The whole house knows me,
theyre aware of my worries and weakness.
This is the best that can happen
what Heaven perhaps will grant us:
not to be wondered at or required to succeed
but simply to be let in
as part of an undeniable Reality,
like stones of the road, like trees.
[Norman Thomas di Giovanni]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Plainness
,#NFDB
1335:Convinced of our mortality
by so many confirmations of final dust,
we drop our voices, our steps grow slow
between the slow rows of family crypts,
whose rhetoric of shadow and stone
promises or prefigures the coveted
dignity of being dead.
There is beauty in the tombs,
the spare Latin and link of fatal dates,
the conjunction of marble and flowers,
the broad intersections, as cool as patios,
and all our yesterdays of a history
now stilled and unique.
We mistake this peace for death,
believing we yearn for our end
when we yearn for sleep and oblivion.
Vibrant in swords and in passion,
asleep in ivy,
only life is real.
Space and time are its shapes,
the minds magical modes,
and when life burns out,
space, time, and death go out with it,
as when light fails
the image in the mirror fails,
already grown dim in the dusk.
Kindly shade of the trees,
breeze rich with birds rocking the branches,
my soul losing itself in other souls
only a wonder could undo their existence,
a wonder not to be understood,
aunque su imaginaria repeticin
infame con horror nuestros das.
Estas cosas pens en la Recoleta,
en el lugar de mi ceniza.
however much its imagined recurrence
taints our days with dread.
These thoughts came to me in the Recoleta,
in the place where my ashes will He.
[Norman Thomas di Giovanni]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Recoleta
,#NFDB
1336:Matthew XV:30”
The first bridge, Constitution Station. At my feet
the shunting trains trace iron labyrinths.
Steam hisses up and up into the night,
which becomes at a stroke the night of the Last Judgment.
From the unseen horizon
and from the very center of my being,
an infinite voice pronounced these things—
things, not words. This is my feeble translation,
time-bound, of what was a single limitless Word:
“Stars, bread, libraries of East and West,
playing-cards, chessboards, galleries, skylights, cellars,
a human body to walk with on the earth,
fingernails, growing at nighttime and in death,
shadows for forgetting, mirrors busily multiplying,
cascades in music, gentlest of all time's shapes.
Borders of Brazil, Uruguay, horses and mornings,
a bronze weight, a copy of the Grettir Saga,
algebra and fire, the charge at Junín in your blood,
days more crowded than Balzac, scent of the honeysuckle,
love and the imminence of love and intolerable remembering,
dreams like buried treasure, generous luck,
and memory itself, where a glance can make men dizzy—
all this was given to you, and with it
the ancient nourishment of heroes—
treachery, defeat, humiliation.
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,#NFDB
1337:EL LABERINTO
Zeus no podra desatar las redes
De piedra que me cercan. He olvidado
Los hombres que antes fui; sigo el odiado
Camino de montonas paredes
Que es mi destino. Rectas galeras
Que se curvan en crculos secretos
Al cabo de los aos. Parapetos
Que ha agrietado la usura de los das.
En el plido polvo he descifrado
Rastros que temo. El aire me ha trado
En las cncavas tardes un bramido
O el eco de un bramido desolado.
S que en la sombra hay Otro, cuya suerte
Es fatigar las largas soledades
Que tejen y destejen este Hades
Y ansiar mi sangre y devorar mi muerte.
Nos buscamos los dos. Ojal fuera
Este el ltimo da de la espera.
THE LABYRINTH
Zeus, Zeus himself could not undo these nets
Of stone encircling me. My mind forgets
The persons I have been along the way,
The hated way of monotonous walls,
Which is my fate. The galleries seem straight
But curve furtively, forming secret circles
At the terminus of years; and the parapets
Have been worn smooth by the passage of days.
Here, in the tepid alabaster dust,
Are tracks that frighten me. The hollow air
Of evening sometimes brings a bellowing,
Or the echo, desolate, of bellowing.
I know that hidden in the shadows there
Lurks another, whose task is to exhaust
The loneliness that braids and weaves this hell,
To crave my blood, and to fatten on my death.
We seek each other. Oh, if only this
Were the last day of our antithesis!
[John Updike]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Labyrinth
,#NFDB
1338:SALA VACIA
Los muebles de caoba perpetan
entre la indecisin del brocado
su tertulia de siempre.
Los daguerrotipos
mienten su falsa cercana
de vejez enclaustrada en un espejo
y ante nuestro examen se escurren
como fechas intiles
de borrosos aniversarios.
Con ademn desdibujado
su casi-voz angustiosa
corre detrs de nuestras almas
con ms de medio siglo de atraso
y apenas si estar ahora
en las maanas iniciales de nuestra infancia.
La actualidad constante
convincente y sangunea
festeja en el trajn de la calle
su plenitud irrecusable
de apoteosis presente
mientras la luz
abre un boquete en los cristales
y humilla las seniles butacas
y arrincona y ahorca
la voz lacia
de los antepasados.
EMPTY DRAWING ROOM
Amid the brocades dimness
the mahogany suite continues
its everlasting conversation.
The daguerreotypes tell their lie:
a false nearness
of old age cloistered in a mirror,
and when we look hard they elude us
like pointless dates
of murky anniversaries.
With a blurred gesture
their anxious almost-voice
runs after our souls
more than half a century late
and there its scarcely reached
the first mornings of our childhood.
Actuality, ceaseless,
ruddy, and beyond doubt,
celebrates in the streets traffic
its unassailable abundance
of present apotheosis,
while the light
slices through the windowpanes
and humbles the senile armchairs
and comers and strangles
the shriveled voice
of these ancestors.
[W. S. Merwin]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Empty Drawing Room
,#NFDB
1339:What type of sentence (I asked myself) will an absolute mind construct? I considered that even in human languages there is no proposition that does not imply the whole universe… . I considered that in the language of a god every word would enunciate that infinite concatenation of facts, and not in an implicit but explicit manner, and not progressively but instantaneously… . A god, I reflected, ought to utter only a single word and in that word absolute fullness. No word uttered by him can be inferior to the universe or less than the sum total of time. Shadows or simulacra of that single word equivalent to a language and to all language can embrace are the poor and ambitious human words, all, world, universe… .
Then there occurred what I cannot forget nor communicate. There occurred the union with the divinity, with the universe (I do not know whether these words differ in meaning). Ecstasy does not repeat its symbols; God has been seen in a blazing light, in a sword or in the circles of a rose. I saw an exceedingly high Wheel, which was not before my eyes, nor behind me, nor to the sides, but every place at one time. That wheel was made of water, but also of fire, and it was (although the edge could be seen) infinite. Interlinked, all things that are, were, and shall be formed it, and I was one of the fibers of that total fabric… .I saw the universe and I saw the intimate designs of the universe; … I saw the faceless god concealed behind the other gods. I saw infinite processes that formed one single felicity and, understanding all, I was able to understand the script of the tiger. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1340:Let no one reduce to tears or reproach
This statement of the mastery of God,
Who, with magnificent irony, gave
Me at once both books and night
Of this city of books He pronounced rulers
These lightless eyes, who can only
Peruse in libraries of dreams
The insensible paragraphs that yield
With every new dawn. Vainly does the day
Lavish on them its infinite books,
Arduous as the arduous manuscripts
Which at Alexandria did perish.
Of hunger and thirst (a Greek story tells us)
Dies a king amidst fountains and gardens;
I aimlessly weary at the confines
Of this tall and deep blind library.
Encyclopedias, atlases, the East
And the West, centuries, dynasties
Symbols, cosmos and cosmogonies
Do walls proffer, but pointlessly.
Slow in my shadow, I the hollow shade
Explore with my indecisive cane;
To think I had imagined Paradise
In the form of such a library.
Something, certainly not termed
Fate, rules on such things;
Another had received in blurry
Afternoons both books and shadow.
Wandering through these slow corridors
I often feel with a vague and sacred dread
That I am another, the dead one, who must
Have trodden the same steps at the same time.
Which of the two is now writing this poem
Of a plural I and of a single shadow?
How important is the word that names me
If the anathema is one and indivisible?
Groussac or Borges, I see this darling
World deform and extinguish
To a pale, uncertain ash
Resembling sleep and oblivion ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1341:A Leopoldo Lugones
Los rumores de la plaza quedan atrás y entro en la Biblioteca. De una manera casi física siento la gravitación de los libros, el ámbito sereno de un orden, el tiempo disecado y conservado mágicamente. A izquierda y a derecha, absortos en su lúcido sueño, se perfilan los rostros momentáneos de los lectores, a la luz de las lámparas estudiosas, como en la hipálage de Milton. Recuerdo haber recordado ya esa figura, en este lugar, y después aquel otro epíteto que también define por el contorno, el árido camello del Lunario, y después aquel hexámetro de la Eneida, que maneja y supera el mismo artificio:
Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram.
Estas reflexiones me dejan en la puerta de su despacho. Entro; cambiamos unas cuantas convencionales y cordiales palabras y le doy este libro. Si no me engaño, usted no me malquería, Lugones, y le hubiera gustado que le gustara algún trabajo mío. Ello no ocurrió nunca, pero esta vez usted vuelve las páginas y lee con aprobación algún verso, acaso porque en él ha reconocido su propia voz, acaso porque la práctica deficiente le importa menos que la sana teoría.
En este punto se deshace mi sueño, como el agua en el agua. La vasta biblioteca que me rodea está en la calle México, no en la calle Rodríguez Peña, y usted, Lugones, se mató a principios del treinta y ocho. Mi vanidad y mi nostalgia han armado una escena imposible. Así será (me digo) pero mañana yo también habré muerto y se confundirán nuestros tiempos y la cronología se perderá en un orbe de símbolos y de algún modo será justo afirmar que yo le he traído este libro y que usted lo ha aceptado. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1342:The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate. I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship. I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone, and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.
I do not know which of us has written this page. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1343:The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things.
Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.
I do not know which of us has written this page. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1344:Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone
Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.
If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?
Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.
There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.
There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.
There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.
You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.
And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.
At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1345:To Sylvina Bullrich
They knew it, the fervent pupils of Pythagoras:
That stars and men revolve in a cycle,
That fateful atoms will bring back the vital
Gold Aphrodite, Thebans, and agoras.
In future epochs the centaur will oppress
With solid uncleft hoof the breast of the Lapith;
When Rome is dust the Minotaur will moan
Once more in the endless dark of its rank palace.
Every sleepless night will come back in minute
Detail. This writing hand will be born from the same
Womb, and bitter armies contrive their doom.
(Edinburghs David Hume made this very point.)
I do not know if we will recur in a second
Cycle, like numbers in a periodic fraction;
But I know that a vague Pythagorean rotation
Night after night sets me down in the world
On the outskirts of this city. A remote street
Which might be either north or west or south,
But always with a blue-washed wall, the shade
Of a fig tree, and a sidewalk of broken concrete.
This, here, is Buenos Aires. Time, which brings
Either love or money to men, hands on to me
Only this withered rose, this empty tracery
Of streets with names recurring from the past
In my blood: Laprida, Cabrera, Soler, Surez . . .
Names in which secret bugle calls are sounding,
Invoking republics, cavalry, and mornings,
Joyful victories, men dying in action.
Squares weighed down by a night in no ones care
Are the vast patios of an empty palace,
And the single-minded streets creating space
Are corridors for sleep and nameless fear.
It returns, the hollow dark of Anaxagoras;
In my human flesh, eternity keeps recurring
And the memory, or plan, of an endless poem beginning:
They knew it, the fervent pupils of Pythagoras . . .
[Alastair Reid]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Cyclical Night
,#NFDB
1346:Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone
Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.
If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?
Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.
There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.
There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.
There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.
You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.
And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.
At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Limits
,#NFDB
1347:A tiger comes to mind. The twilight here
Exalts the vast and busy Library
And seems to set the bookshelves back in gloom;
Innocent, ruthless, bloodstained, sleek
It wanders through its forest and its day
Printing a track along the muddy banks
Of sluggish streams whose names it does not know
(In its world there are no names or past
Or time to come, only the vivid now)
And makes its way across wild distances
Sniffing the braided labyrinth of smells
And in the wind picking the smell of dawn
And tantalizing scent of grazing deer;
Among the bamboo's slanting stripes I glimpse
The tiger's stripes and sense the bony frame
Under the splendid, quivering cover of skin.
Curving oceans and the planet's wastes keep us
Apart in vain; from here in a house far off
In South America I dream of you,
Track you, O tiger of the Ganges' banks.
It strikes me now as evening fills my soul
That the tiger addressed in my poem
Is a shadowy beast, a tiger of symbols
And scraps picked up at random out of books,
A string of labored tropes that have no life,
And not the fated tiger, the deadly jewel
That under sun or stars or changing moon
Goes on in Bengal or Sumatra fulfilling
Its rounds of love and indolence and death.
To the tiger of symbols I hold opposed
The one that's real, the one whose blood runs hot
As it cuts down a herd of buffaloes,
And that today, this August third, nineteen
Fifty-nine, throws its shadow on the grass;
But by the act of giving it a name,
By trying to fix the limits of its world,
It becomes a fiction not a living beast,
Not a tiger out roaming the wilds of earth.
We'll hunt for a third tiger now, but like
The others this one too will be a form
Of what I dream, a structure of words, and not
The flesh and one tiger that beyond all myths
Paces the earth. I know these things quite well,
Yet nonetheless some force keeps driving me
In this vague, unreasonable, and ancient quest,
And I go on pursuing through the hours
Another tiger, the beast not found in verse.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Other Tiger
,#NFDB
1348:For almost all astronomical objects, gravitation dominates, and they have the same unexpected behavior. Gravitation reverses the usual relation between energy and temperature. In the domain of astronomy, when heat flows from hotter to cooler objects, the hot objects get hotter and the cool objects get cooler. As a result, temperature differences in the astronomical universe tend to increase rather than decrease as time goes on. There is no final state of uniform temperature, and there is no heat death. Gravitation gives us a universe hospitable to life. Information and order can continue to grow for billions of years in the future, as they have evidently grown in the past. The vision of the future as an infinite playground, with an unending sequence of mysteries to be understood by an unending sequence of players exploring an unending supply of information, is a glorious vision for scientists. Scientists find the vision attractive, since it gives them a purpose for their existence and an unending supply of jobs. The vision is less attractive to artists and writers and ordinary people. Ordinary people are more interested in friends and family than in science. Ordinary people may not welcome a future spent swimming in an unending flood of information. A darker view of the information-dominated universe was described in the famous story “The Library of Babel,” written by Jorge Luis Borges in 1941.§ Borges imagined his library, with an infinite array of books and shelves and mirrors, as a metaphor for the universe. Gleick’s book has an epilogue entitled “The Return of Meaning,” expressing the concerns of people who feel alienated from the prevailing scientific culture. The enormous success of information theory came from Shannon’s decision to separate information from meaning. His central dogma, “Meaning is irrelevant,” declared that information could be handled with greater freedom if it was treated as a mathematical abstraction independent of meaning. The consequence of this freedom is the flood of information in which we are drowning. The immense size of modern databases gives us a feeling of meaninglessness. Information in such quantities reminds us of Borges’s library extending infinitely in all directions. It is our task as humans to bring meaning back into this wasteland. As finite creatures who think and feel, we can create islands of meaning in the sea of information. Gleick ends his book with Borges’s image of the human condition: We walk the corridors, searching the shelves and rearranging them, looking for lines of meaning amid leagues of cacophony and incoherence, reading the history of the past and of the future, collecting our thoughts and collecting the thoughts of others, and every so often glimpsing mirrors, in which we may recognize creatures of the information. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
1349:On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny -- Philemon Holland's -- and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the unimaginable universe.
I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1350:Learning
After some time, you learn the subtle difference between
holding a hand
and imprisoning a soul;
You learn that love does not equal sex,
and that company does not equal security,
and you start to learn….
That kisses are not contracts and gifts are not promises,
and you start to accept defeat with the head up high
and open eyes,
and you learn to build all roads on today,
because the terrain of tomorrow is too insecure for plans…
and the future has its own way of falling apart in half.
And you learn that if it’s too much
even the warmth of the sun can burn.
So you plant your own garden and embellish your own soul,
instead of waiting for someone to bring flowers to you.
And you learn that you can actually bear hardship,
that you are actually strong,
and you are actually worthy,
and you learn and learn…and so every day.
Over time you learn that being with someone
because they offer you a good future,
means that sooner or later you’ll want to return to your past.
Over time you comprehend that only who is capable
of loving you with your flaws, with no intention of changing you
can bring you all happiness.
Over time you learn that if you are with a person
only to accompany your own solitude,
irremediably you’ll end up wishing not to see them again.
Over time you learn that real friends are few
and whoever doesn’t fight for them, sooner or later,
will find himself surrounded only with false friendships.
Over time you learn that words spoken in moments of anger
continue hurting throughout a lifetime.
Over time you learn that everyone can apologize,
but forgiveness is an attribute solely of great souls.
Over time you comprehend that if you have hurt a friend harshly
it is very likely that your friendship will never be the same.
Over time you realize that despite being happy with your friends,
you cry for those you let go.
Over time you realize that every experience lived,
with each person, is unrepeatable.
Over time you realize that whoever humiliates
or scorns another human being, sooner or later
will suffer the same humiliations or scorn in tenfold.
Over time you learn to build your roads on today,
because the path of tomorrow doesn’t exist.
Over time you comprehend that rushing things or forcing them to happen
causes the finale to be different form expected.
Over time you realize that in fact the best was not the future,
but the moment you were living just that instant.
Over time you will see that even when you are happy with those around you,
you’ll yearn for those who walked away.
Over time you will learn to forgive or ask for forgiveness,
say you love, say you miss, say you need,
say you want to be friends, since before
a grave, it will no longer make sense.
But unfortunately, only over time… ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1351:APRENDIENDO
Después de un tiempo, uno aprende la sutil diferencia entre sostener una mano y encadenar un alma, y uno aprende que el amor no significa acostarse y una compañía no significa seguridad, y uno empieza a aprender...
Que los besos no son contratos y los regalos no son promesas, y uno empieza a aceptar sus derrotas con la cabeza alta y los ojos abiertos, y uno aprende a construir todos sus caminos en el hoy, porque el terreno de mañana es demasiado inseguro para planes...y los futuros tienen una forma de caerse en la mitad.
Y después de un tiempo uno aprende que si es demasiado, hasta el calor del sol quema. Así que uno planta su propio jardín y decora su propia alma, en lugar de esperar a que alguien le traiga flores. Y uno aprende que realmente puede aguantar, que uno realmente es fuerte, que uno realmente vale, y uno aprende y aprende... y con cada día uno aprende. Con el tiempo aprendes que estar con alguien porque te ofrece un buen futuro, significa que tarde o temprano querrás volver a tu pasado.
Con el tiempo comprendes que sólo quien es capaz de amarte con tus defectos, sin pretender cambiarte, puede brindarte toda la felicidad que deseas. Con el tiempo te das cuenta de que si estás al lado de esa persona sólo por acompañar tu soledad, irremediablemente acabarás no deseando volver a verla. Con el tiempo entiendes que los verdaderos amigos son contados, y que el que no lucha por ellos tarde o temprano se verá rodeado sólo de amistades falsas.
Con el tiempo aprendes que las palabras dichas en un momento de ira pueden seguir lastimando a quien heriste, durante toda la vida. Con el tiempo aprendes que disculpar cualquiera lo hace, pero perdonar es sólo de almas grandes. Con el tiempo comprendes que si has herido a un amigo duramente, muy probablemente la amistad jamás volverá a ser igual. Con el tiempo te das cuenta que aunque seas feliz con tus amigos, algún día llorarás por aquellos! que dejaste ir. Con el tiempo te das cuenta de que cada experiencia vivida con cada persona es irrepetible.
Con el tiempo te das cuenta de que el que humilla o desprecia a un ser humano, tarde o temprano sufrirá las mismas humillaciones o desprecios multiplicados al cuadrado. Con el tiempo aprendes a construir todos tus caminos en el hoy, porque el terreno del mañana es demasiado incierto para hacer planes. Con el tiempo comprendes que apresurar las cosas o forzarlas a que pasen ocasionará que al final no sean como esperabas. Con el tiempo te das cuenta de que en realidad lo mejor no era el futuro, sino el momento que estabas viviendo justo en ese instante.
Con el tiempo verás que aunque seas feliz con los que están a tu lado,añorarás terriblemente a los que ayer estaban contigo y ahora se han marchado. Con el tiempo aprenderás que intentar perdonar o pedir perdón, decir que amas, decir que extrañas, decir que necesitas, decir que quieres ser amigo, ante una tumba, ya no tiene ningún sentido. Pero desafortunadamente, solo con el tiempo... ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1352:ROSAS
In the drawing rooms quiet
whose rigorous clock scatters
its unclouded and ordinary time
on the desolate white
that swathes the mahoganys red heat,
a voice, reproachful and tender,
pronounced that familiarly sinister name.
Straightway his tyrannical image
loomed huge on the moment,
not like marble profiled by a forest,
but shadowy, vast, and remote
like a darkening mountain.
Conjecture and memory
flowed in on that casual utterance
like a bottomless echo.
Famous in infamy,
his name once could ravage a city,
rally the gauchos idolatry,
and stab horror in history.
We lose count of those corpses today,
crime is more piecemeal
if we weigh Times ferocity into the balance
the unwearied immortality
that decimates men without ever declaring its guilt,
the festering wound
where all a worlds bloodshed awaits the last of the gods
to seal the worlds sores on the last of all days.
Perhaps Rosas
was only the implacable butcher our grandfathers thought him;
I think of him now, like ourselves, as
a creature of chance enclosed in an actions parentheses:
he lived out the everyday anguish of things
and for better or worse troubled
the ages uncertainty.
Today an oceans span divides
what is left of his bones from his country;
today, grief-stricken or dry-eyed, the living
may grind both his night and his nullity under their heels.
Even God has forgotten him,
and to delay his eternal extinction
for a pittance of hatred
is to turn our contempt into charity now.
[Ben Belitt]
ROSAS
En la sala tranquila
cuyo reloj austero derrama
un tiempo ya sin aventuras ni asombro
sobre la lastimosa blancura
que amortaja la pasin roja de la caoba,
alguien en queja de cario
pronunci el nombre familiarmente horrendo.
La imagen del tirano
abarrot el instante,
no clara como un mrmol en un bosque,
sino grande y umbra
como la sombra de una remota montaa
y conjeturas y memorias
sucedieron a la mencin eventual
como un eco insondable.
Famosamente infame
su nombre fue desolacin en las calles,
idoltrico amor en el gauchaje
y horror de pualadas en la historia.
Hoy el olvido borra su censo de muertes,
porque son parciales los crmenes
si los cotejamos con la fechora del Tiempo,
esa inmortalidad infatigable
que anonada con silenciosa culpa las razas
y en cuya herida siempre abierta
que el ltimo dios habr de restaar el ltimo da,
cabe toda la sangre derramada.
No s si Rosas
fue slo un vido pual como los abuelos decan;
creo que fue como t y yo
un azar intercalado en los hechos
que vivi en la cotidiana zozobra
e inquiet para felicidades y penas
la incertidumbre de otros.
Hoy el mar es una separacin caudalosa
entre sus restos y la patria,
hoy toda vida por lastimera que sea
puede pisar su nada y su noche.
Ya Dios lo habr olvidado
y es menos una injuria que una piedad
demorar su infinita disolucin
con limosnas de odio.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Rosas
,#NFDB
1353:THE GOLEM
If every name is (as the Greek maintains
In the Cratylus) the archetype of its thing,
Among the letters of ring, resides the ring,
And in the word Nile all the Nile remains.
Then, made up of vowels and consonants,
Encoding Gods essence, should exist some Name
Whose exact syllables and letters frame
Within them, terribly, Omnipotence.
Adam and all the stars had known it, placed
There in the Garden. The corrosive rust
Of sin (cabalists say) has long effaced
The Name that generations since have lost.
Human innocency and human guile
Are boundless: it is known that a day came
When the Chosen People pursued the Name
Over the wakeful ghettos midnight oil.
Unlike the way of those who, as in fog,
Beam a dim shadow in dim history,
Green and alive remains the memory
Of Judah, the Hohe Rabbi Lw of Prague.
Yearning to know that which the Deity
Knows, the Rabbi turned to permutations
Of letters in complicated variations,
And finally pronounced the Name which is the Key,
The Entry Gate, the Echo, Host, and Mansion,
Over a dummy at which, with sluggish hand,
He labored hard that it might understand
Secrets of Time, Space, Being, and Extension.
The simulacrum raised its heavy, lowered
Eyelids and perceived colors and forms;
It understood not; lost in loud alarms,
It started to take groping paces forward.
And like ourselves, it gradually became
Locked in the sonorous meshes of the net
Of After, Before, Tomorrow, Meanwhile, Yet,
Right, Left, You, Me, and Different and Same.
(The cabalist from whom the creature took
Its inspiration called the weird thing Golem
But all these matters are discussed by Scholem
In a most learned passage in his book.)
The rabbi revealed to it the universe
(This is my foot; thats yours; this is a log)
And after years of training, the perverse
Pupil managed to sweep the synagogue.
Perhaps there was a faulty text, or breach
In the articulation of the Name;
The magic was the highestall the same,
The apprentice person never mastered speech.
Less a mans than a dogs, less a dogs, well,
Even than a things, the creatures eyes
Would always turn to follow the rabbis
Steps through the dubious shadows of his cell.
Something eerie, gross, about the Golem,
For, at his very coming, the rabbis cat
Would vanish. (The cat cannot be found in Scholem;
Across the years, I divine it, for all that.)
Toward God it would extend those filial palms,
Aping the devotions of its God,
Or bend itself, the stupid, grinning clod,
In hollow, Orientalized salaams.
The rabbi gazed on it with tender eyes
And terror. How (he asked) could it be done
That I engender this distressing son?
Inaction is wisdom. I left off being wise.
To an infinite series why was it for me
To add another integer? To the vain
Hank that is spun out in Eternity
Another cause or effect, another pain?
At the anguished hour when the light gets vague
Upon his Golem his eyes would come to rest.
Who can tell us the feelings in His breast
As God gazed on His rabbi there in Prague?
[John Hollander]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Golem
,#NFDB
1354:Vedem pe marii poeti ai antichitatii - intre ei Homer, cu spada in mana - poeti cu care Dante schimba cuvinte ce nu pot fi reproduse. Insa aici troneaza tacerea, pentru ca totul este dominat de teribila pudoare a celor care nu vor vedea niciodata chipul Domnului. Dar, indata ce ajungem la cantul al cincilea, vedem ca Dante facuse deja marea sa descoperire: posibilitatea unui dialog cu sufletele mortilor, pe care apoi ii va judeca in felul sau. Nu, nu-i va judeca; el stie ca nu este judecator; judecator este altcineva; este cel de-al treilea interlocutor, este divinitatea.
Ei bine, aici se afla Homer, aici se afla Platon si alti barbati ilustri. Dante vede insa doi oameni pe care ii cunoaste si care apartin lumii contemporane lui: Paolo si Francesca. El stie cum au murit cei doi adulteri. Ii cheama si ei vin indata. Dante spune: 'Quali colombe dal disio chiamate'. Suntem in fata a doi pacatosi, iar Dante ii compara cu 'doi porumbei chemati de dorinta'. Si asta pentru ca senzualitatea trebuie sa fie, de asemenea, in centrul scenei. Atunci se apropie de el Francesca, singura care vorbeste (Paolo nu poate vorbi), multumindu-i pentru ca i-a chemat, si ii spune aceste cuvinte patetice: 'Se fosse amico il re de l'universo noi preghiremmo lui de la tua pace', 'Daca Regele Universului ne-ar fi prieten l-am ruga pentru pacea ta', adaugand: 'din moment ce pacatele noastre nu-ti inspira mila'. Apoi, ea isi povesteste istoria si o spune de doua ori. Prima data o povesteste intr-o maniera rezervata, dar insista asupra faptului ca ea continua sa fie indragostita de Paolo. Continua sa fie indragostita de Paolo, deoarece sentimentul caintei este imposibil in Infern. Cainta este oprita in Infern, astfel incat, stiind ca a pacatuit, ea continua sa fie credincioasa pacatului sau, iar aceasta ii da o grandoare eroica. Ar fi fost oribil, de pilda, daca s-ar fi lamentat, daca s-ar fi cait, daca s-ar fi plans de cele intamplate. Dar ea accepta aceasta pedeapsa, stie ca pedeapsa a fost dreapta si continua sa-l iubeasca pe Paolo.
Vorbind despre dragostea lor, Dante aminteste ca 'Amor condusse noi ad una morte', si, intr-adevar, dragostea i-a dus pe amandoi la moarte; amandoi au fost executati impreuna. Apoi, Dante este curios sa mai afle ceva. Dar pe el nu-l intereseaza adulterul, nu-l intereseaza in ce mod au fost descoperiti si apoi ucisi. Pe el il intereseaza ceva mult mai intim. El ar vrea sa stie cum si-au dat seama ei ca erau indragostiti, cum s-au indragostit si cum a venit timpul dulcelor suspine.
[...]
Aici este ceva ce nu spune Dante, ceva care se simte de-a lungul acestui intreg episod si care-i subliniaza virtutea. Iata: Dante, cu infinita compatimire, ne infatiseaza destinul celor doi amanti, dar, totodata, se simte ca el invidiaza acest destin. Ei raman in Infern, iar el se va salva. Ei insa s-au iubit, in timp ce el nu a reusit sa fie iubit de femeia pe care el o adora, Beatrice. In schimb, acesti doi infami sunt impreuna, desi nu-si pot vorbi si se rotesc in acea neagra involburare, fara nici o speranta, fara a spera macar, ne spune Dante, ca suferintele lor vor inceta vreodata, dar ei sunt impreuna, si cand ea vorbeste, spune 'noi'. Cu alte cuvinte, ea vorbeste pentru amandoi, ceea ce inseamna ca, intr-un fel, ei sunt impreuna. Sunt impreuna pentru eternitate, impartasesc amandoi Infernul, iar acest lucru ii pare lui Dante un fel de Paradis... ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1355:He couldn’t have known it, but among the original run of The History of Love, at least one copy was destined to change a life.
This particular book was one of the last of the two thousand to be printed, and sat for longer than the rest in a warehouse in the outskirts of Santiago, absorbing the humidity. From there it was finally sent to a bookstore in Buenos Aires. The careless owner hardly noticed it, and for some years it languished on the shelves, acquiring a pattern of mildew across the cover. It was a slim volume, and its position on the shelf wasn’t exactly prime: crowded on the left by an overweight biography of a minor actress, and on the right by the once-bestselling novel of an author that everyone had since forgotten, it hardly left its spine visible to even the most rigorous browser. When the store changed owners it fell victim to a massive clearance, and was trucked off to another warehouse, foul, dingy, crawling with daddy longlegs, where it remained in the dark and damp before finally being sent to a small secondhand bookstore not far from the home of the writer Jorge Luis Borges.
The owner took her time unpacking the books she’d bought cheaply and in bulk from the warehouse. One morning, going through the boxes, she discovered the mildewed copy of The History of Love. She’d never heard of it, but the title caught her eye. She put it aside, and during a slow hour in the shop she read the opening chapter, called 'The Age of Silence.'
The owner of the secondhand bookstore lowered the volume of the radio. She flipped to the back flap of the book to find out more about the author, but all it said was that Zvi Litvinoff had been born in Poland and moved to Chile in 1941, where he still lived today. There was no photograph. That day, in between helping customers, she finished the book. Before locking up the shop that evening, she placed it in the window, a little wistful about having to part with it.
The next morning, the first rays of the rising sun fell across the cover of The History of Love. The first of many flies alighted on its jacket. Its mildewed pages began to dry out in the heat as the blue-gray Persian cat who lorded over the shop brushed past it to lay claim to a pool of sunlight. A few hours later, the first of many passersby gave it a cursory glance as they went by the window.
The shop owner did not try to push the book on any of her customers. She knew that in the wrong hands such a book could easily be dismissed or, worse, go unread. Instead she let it sit where it was in the hope that the right reader might discover it.
And that’s what happened. One afternoon a tall young man saw the book in the window. He came into the shop, picked it up, read a few pages, and brought it to the register. When he spoke to the owner, she couldn’t place his accent. She asked where he was from, curious about the person who was taking the book away. Israel, he told her, explaining that he’d recently finished his time in the army and was traveling around South America for a few months. The owner was about to put the book in a bag, but the young man said he didn’t need one, and slipped it into his backpack. The door chimes were still tinkling as she watched him disappear, his sandals slapping against the hot, bright street.
That night, shirtless in his rented room, under a fan lazily pushing around the hot air, the young man opened the book and, in a flourish he had been fine-tuning for years, signed his name: David Singer.
Filled with restlessness and longing, he began to read. ~ Nicole Krauss,#NFDB
1356:AMANECER
En la honda noche universal
que apenas contradicen los macilentos faroles
una racha perdida
ha ofendido las calles taciturnas
como presentimiento tembloroso
del amanecer horrible que ronda
igual que una mentira
los arrabales desmantelados del mundo.
Curioso de la descansada tiniebla
y acobardado por la amenaza del alba
resent la tremenda conjetura
de Schopenhauer y de Berkeley
que declara que el mundo
es una actividad de la mente,
un sueo de las almas,
sin base ni propsito ni volumen.
Y ya que las ideas
no son eternas como el mrmol
sino inmortales como una selva o un ro,
la especulacin anterior
asumi otra forma en el alba
y la supersticin de esa hora
cuando la luz como una enredadera
va a implicar las paredes de la sombra,
dobleg mi razn
y traz el capricho siguiente:
Si estn ajenas de sustancia las cosas
y si esta numerosa Buenos Aires
equiparable en complicacin a un ejrcito,
no es ms que un sueo
que logran en compartida magia las almas,
hay un instante
en que peligra desaforadamente su ser
y es el instante estremecido del alba,
cuando son pocos los que suean el mundo
y slo algunos trasnochadores conservan
cenicienta y apenas bosquejada
la visin de las calles
que definirn despus con los otros.
Hora en que el sueo pertinaz de la vida
est en peligro de quebranto,
hora en que le sera fcil a Dios
matar del todo su obra!
Pero otra vez el mundo se ha salvado.
La luz discurre inventando sucios colores
y con algn remordimiento
de mi complicidad en la resurreccin cotidiana
solicito mi casa,
atnita y glacial en la luz blanca,
mientras un pjaro detiene el silencio
y la noche gastada
se ha quedado en los ojos de los ciegos.
DAYBREAK
In the deep universal night
scarcely dispelled by the flickering gaslamps
a gust of wind coming out of nowhere
stirs the silent streets
with a trembling presentiment
of the hideous dawn that haunts
like some he
the tumbledown outskirts of cities all over the world.
Under the spell of the refreshing darkness
and intimidated by the threat of dawn,
I felt again that tremendous conjecture
of Schopenhauer and Berkeley
which declares the world
an activity of the mind,
a dream of souls,
without foundation or purpose or volume.
And since ideas
are not like marble, everlasting,
but ever-renewing like a forest or a river,
the previous speculation
took another form in the dawn,
and the superstition of the hour,
when the light like a vine
begins twining itself to walls still in shadow,
dominated my reason
and projected the following whim:
If all things are devoid of matter
and if this populous Buenos Aires
comparable to an army in complexity
is no more than a dream
arrived at in magic by souls working together,
theres a moment
in which the citys existence is at the brink of danger
and disorder
and that is the trembling moment of dawn
when those who are dreaming the world are few
and only a handful of night owls preserve
ashen and sketchy
a vision of the streets
which they will afterward define for others.
The hour in which the persistent dream of life
is in danger of breaking down,
the hour in which God might easily
destroy all his work!
But once more the world comes to its own rescue.
The light streaks in inventing dirty colors
and with a tremor of remorse
for my complicity in the daily rebirth
I seek my house,
amazed and icelike in the white glare,
while a songbird holds the silence back
and the spent night
lives on in the eyes of the blind.
[Norman Thomas di Giovanni]
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Daybreak
,#NFDB
2 Jorge Luis Borges
Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
Translation copyright Jorge Luis Borges and
Norman Thomas di Giovanni,
The Library of Babel, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
The Library of Babel, by Jorge Luis Borges (1941)
By this art you may contemplate the variations of the 23 letters...
--- Overview of noun jorge_luis_borges
The noun jorge luis borges has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
1. Borges, Jorge Borges, Jorge Luis Borges ::: (Argentinian writer remembered for his short stories (1899-1986))
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun jorge_luis_borges
1 sense of jorge luis borges
Sense 1
Borges, Jorge Borges, Jorge Luis Borges
INSTANCE OF=> writer, author
=> communicator
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun jorge_luis_borges
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun jorge_luis_borges
1 sense of jorge luis borges
Sense 1
Borges, Jorge Borges, Jorge Luis Borges
INSTANCE OF=> writer, author
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun jorge_luis_borges
1 sense of jorge luis borges
Sense 1
Borges, Jorge Borges, Jorge Luis Borges
-> writer, author
=> abstractor, abstracter
=> alliterator
=> authoress
=> biographer
=> coauthor, joint author
=> commentator, reviewer
=> compiler
=> contributor
=> cyberpunk
=> drafter
=> dramatist, playwright
=> essayist, litterateur
=> folk writer
=> framer
=> gagman, gagster, gagwriter
=> ghostwriter, ghost
=> Gothic romancer
=> hack, hack writer, literary hack
=> journalist
=> librettist
=> lyricist, lyrist
=> novelist
=> pamphleteer
=> paragrapher
=> poet
=> polemicist, polemist, polemic
=> rhymer, rhymester, versifier, poetizer, poetiser
=> scenarist
=> scriptwriter
=> space writer
=> speechwriter
=> tragedian
=> wordmonger
=> word-painter
=> wordsmith
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HAS INSTANCE=> Hardy, Thomas Hardy
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--- Grep of noun jorge_luis_borges
jorge luis borges
Wikipedia - Daguanying station -- Beijing Subway station
Wikipedia - Guanyindong -- Cave and archaeological site in China
Wikipedia - Guanyin Famen -- School of Mahayana Buddhism founded in 1988 by Ching Hai.
Wikipedia - Guanyin -- Chinese interpretation of the bodhisattva AvalokiteM-EM-^[vara
Wikipedia - Quan M-CM-^Bm Pagoda (Ho Chi Minh City) -- Chinese-style Buddhist pagoda in Cho Lon, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, dedicated to Guanyin
Wikipedia - Songzhu Temple -- Guanyin temple in Taichung, Taiwan
https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Guanyin
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