Jorge Luis Borges: Trending quotes (page 5)

“It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.”

“From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me.”

“The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men.”

“We have shared out, like thieves, the amazing treasures of days and nights.”

“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.”

“Loneliness does not worry me; life is difficult enough, putting up with yourself and with your own habits.”

“It only takes two facing mirrors to build a labyrinth.”

“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.”

“To think, analyze and invent are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence.”

“The certainty that everything has already been written annuls us, or renders us phantasmal.”

“Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.”

“We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe.”

“Like every writer, he measured the virtues of other writers by their performance, and asked that they measure him by what he conjectured or planned.”

“I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me…”

“He consorted with prostitutes and poets… and with persons even worse.”

“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.”

“Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.”

“With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another.”

“I reflected that everything happens to a man precisely, precisely now. Centuries of centuries and only in the present do things happen; countless men in the air, on the face of the earth and the sea, and all that really is happening is happening to me...”