Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic. Jorge Luis Borges More Quotes by Jorge Luis Borges More Quotes From Jorge Luis Borges In truth, the Library includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted by the twenty-five orthographical symbols, but not a single example of absolute nonsense. Jorge Luis Borges librarytwentiesexample What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose? Jorge Luis Borges mortalityformworld That one individual should awaken in another memories that belong to still a third is an obvious paradox. Jorge Luis Borges paradoxindividualmemories 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 styleshouldway To bless thine enemy is a good way to satisfy thy vanity. Jorge Luis Borges vanityenemyway There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless. Jorge Luis Borges intellectualexerciseart 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 serenityorderbook 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 embracepossibilitycentury 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 he-manactorsmen 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 illustrationbecomingmen 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 painmenreality 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 twilightwritingpast 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 farewellplaymen 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 libraryparadisekind I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia. Jorge Luis Borges conjunctionsmirrorsdiscovery 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 warriormenpast 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 dreamwritingbook 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 syntaxannoyedvoice I will pause to consider this eternity from which the subsequent ones derive. Jorge Luis Borges pauseseternity It seemed incredible to me that day without premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death . Jorge Luis Borges premonitionincrediblesshould
