Quotes by Borges, Jorge Luis

"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."

Borges, Jorge Luis on influence   

"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."

Borges, Jorge Luis on literature   

"To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god."

Borges, Jorge Luis on love
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"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."

Borges, Jorge Luis on night
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"The original is unfaithful to the translation."

Borges, Jorge Luis on originality   

"The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing."

Borges, Jorge Luis on posterity   

"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."

Borges, Jorge Luis on procrastination   

"Life itself is a quotation."

Borges, Jorge Luis on quotations
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"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."

Borges, Jorge Luis on time   

"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."

Borges, Jorge Luis on writers and writing   

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

Borges, Jorge Luis on writers and writing   

"De ene literatuur verschilt van de andere niet zozeer door de tekst dan wel door de manier waarop zij gelezen wordt."

Borges, Jorge Luis on literatuur   

"Een boek dat niet zijn contraboek bevat is onvolledig."

Borges, Jorge Luis on boeken   

"Een schrijver zou nog een keer moeten leven om te zien of hij gewaardeerd wordt."

Borges, Jorge Luis on schrijver   

"Klassiek is niet een boek dat per se die of die verdiensten bezit; het is een boek dat de mensengeneraties, door verschillende redenen gedreven, lezen met tevoren vaststaande geestdrift en met een mysterieuze loyaliteit."

Borges, Jorge Luis on boeken   

"Ik heb me altijd ingebeeld dat het paradijs een soort bibliotheek zal zijn."

Borges, Jorge Luis on bibliotheek