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Jorge Luis Borges Quotes
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Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language literature. His best-known books, Ficciones and El Aleph , published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion.

Borges' works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges' A Universal History of Infamy . However, some critics consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil.

In 1914, Borges' family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind by the age of 55; as he never learned braille, he became unable to read. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination.

In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first Formentor prize , which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971, he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland.

His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the Latin American Boom and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists."

✵ 24. August 1899 – 14. June 1986
Jorge Luis Borges photo
Jorge Luis Borges: 213   quotes 11   likes

Jorge Luis Borges Quotes

“How else can one threaten, other than with death? The interesting, the original thing, would be to threaten someone with immortality.”

Jorge Luis Borges

¿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.
Borges, Biografía Verbal (1988) by Roberto Alifano, p. 23

Death

“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

Shakespeare's Memory, (1983); as translated by Andrew Hurley in Collected Fictions (1998)

“Razed the garden, profaned the chalices and the altars, by horse the Huns broke into the Monastic library and they tore the incomprehensible books and they vituperated them and they burnt them, fearing their symbols and characters might be concealing secret blasphemies against their God, who was an iron scimitar…”

Jorge Luis Borges

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.
The Theologians [Los Teólogos]

God , Secret , Books , Fear

“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 book The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

As translated by Will Fitzgerald
Other Inquisitions (1952), The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

Universe

“There are people who barely feel poetry, and they are generally dedicated to teaching it.”

Jorge Luis Borges

"Poetry" (1977)

People , Feeling

“I tried mescaline and cocaine in my youth, but I immediately switched to mint candy, which was more stimulating. I am not interested in drugs if they produce the same effects as alcohol. A drunkard is evidently ridiculous. I have been drunk some times, and I remember them as horrible experiences for me and everyone else.”

Jorge Luis Borges

En mi juventud probé la mescalina y la cocaína pero enseguida me pasé a los pastillas de menta que me parecieron más estimulantes. Si las drogas producen el mismo efecto que el alcohol, no me interesan. Un borracho es evidentemente ridículo. He estado borracho algunas veces y lo recuerdo como una experiencia muy desagradable para los demás y para mí.
As quoted in Borges, El palabrista (1999) by Estebán Peicovich, p. 53

Alcohol , Youth , Time

“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 book Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Variant: Today, one of the churches of Tlön Platonically maintains that a certain pain, a certain greenish tint of yellow, a certain temperature, a certain sound, are the only reality. All men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.

Men , Pain , Reality

“I will pause to consider this eternity from which the subsequent ones derive.”

Jorge Luis Borges

"A History of Eternity" in Selected Non-Fictions Vol. 1, (1999), edited by Eliot Weinberger

“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

"Note on Walt Whitman" ["Nota sobre Walt Whitman"]
Discussion (1932)

Books , Exercises , Time

“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 book Evaristo Carriego: A Book About Old-Time Buenos Aires

Evaristo Carriego (1930) Ch. 3

Books , Art , Parting

“Your unforgivable sins do not allow you to see my splendor.”

Jorge Luis Borges

"The masked dyer Hakim of Merv" [El tintorero enmascarado Hakim de Merv] Universal History of Infamy (1935); also translated as "Hakim, Masked Dyer of Merv" ( review of "Hakim, Masked Dyer of Merv" http://www.elimae.com/reviews/borges/merv.html)

“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)

“Wilde was not a great poet nor a consummate prose writer. He was a very astute Irishman who encompassed in epigrams an esthetic credo which others before him scattered in the space of long pages. He was an enfant terrible.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Luna De Enfrente

"A Poem by Oscar Wilde" http://www.themodernword.com/borges/borges_wilde.html (1925) An essay on Wilde and his Ballad of Reading Gaol.

“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 book The Immortal

"The Immortal" (1949)

Change , Time

“The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.”

Jorge Luis Borges

On the Falklands War, as quoted in Time magazine (14 February 1983)

Men , Fight

“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Other Inquisitions

"Pascal’s Sphere" ["La esfera de Pascal"] (1951)
Variant translations: Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.
It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.
Other Inquisitions (1952)

History , Universe

“I found America the friendliest, most forgiving, and most generous nation I had ever visited. We South Americans tend to think of things in terms of convenience, whereas people in the United States approach things ethically. This — amateur Protestant that I am — I admired above all. It even helped me overlook skyscrapers, paper bags, television, plastics, and the unholy jungle of gadgets.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Autobiographical Notes (1970)

People , Forgiveness , Thinking , Help

“This was the first time Remington rifles were used in the Argentine, and it tickles my fancy to think that the firm that shaves me every morning bears the same name as the one that killed my grandfather.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Autobiographical Notes (1970)

Thinking , Time

“In the work of Ts'ui Pên, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for other forkings. Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge: for example, you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another, my friend.”

Jorge Luis Borges

The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths

Departure , Past , Housing

“The minotaur more than justifies the existence of the labyrinth.”

Jorge Luis Borges

"Ibn-Hakim Al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth", in The Aleph (1949); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)

“Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Labyrinths

"Partial Magic in the Quixote", Labyrinths (1964)

Reality

“That history should have imitated history was already sufficiently marvellous; that history should imitate literature is inconceivable….”

Jorge Luis Borges book Ficciones

"Theme of the Traitor and Hero"
Ficciones (1944)

History , Literature

“The heresies we should fear are those which can be confused with orthodoxy.”

Jorge Luis Borges book The Theologians

The Theologians, translated by James E. Irby (1964)

Fear

“The time for your labor has been granted.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Ficciones

"The Secret Miracle"
Ficciones (1944)

Time

“May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell.”

Jorge Luis Borges book The Library of Babel

Que el cielo exista, aunque mi lugar sea el infierno.
"The Library of Babel" (1941)
Variants:
I cannot think it unlikely that there is such a total book on some shelf in the universe. I pray to the unknown gods that some man — even a single man, tens of centuries ago — has perused and read this 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 may 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.
May Heaven exist, even if our place is Hell.
"Deutsches Requiem". (Emece edition, 1974)

Hell

“I have known that thing the Greeks knew not – uncertainty.”

Jorge Luis Borges

"The Lottery in Babylon"; tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)
Variant: I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks.

“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 book Ficciones

"The Secret Miracle"
Ficciones (1944)

Parting

“Of course, like all young men, I tried to be as unhappy as I could — a kind of Hamlet and Raskolnikov rolled into one.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Autobiographical Notes (1970)

Men

“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

"Avatars of the Tortoise" ["Avatares de la tortuga"]
Discussion (1932)

World , Dreams , Time , Parting

“Well, he wrote a book -- well, maybe here I'm being political -- he wrote a book about the tyrants of South America, and then he had several stanzas against the United States. Now he knows that that's rubbish. And he had not a word against Perón. Because he had a law suit in Buenos Aires, that was explained to me afterwards, and he didn't care to risk anything. And so, when he was supposed to be writing at the top of his voice, full of noble indignation, he had not a word to say against Perón. And he was married to an Argentine lady, he knew that many of his friends had been sent to jail. He knew all about the state of our country, but not a word against him. At the same time, he was speaking against the United States, knowing the whole thing was a lie, no? But, of course, that doesn't mean anything against his poetry. Neruda is a very fine poet, a great poet in fact. And when they gave Miguel de Asturias the Nobel Prize, I said that it should have been given to Neruda! Now when I was in Chile, and we were on different political sides, I think he did the best thing to do. He went on a holiday during the three or four days I was there so there was no occasion for our meeting. But I think he was acting politely, no? Because he knew that people would be playing him up against me, no? I mean, I was an Argentine, poet, he was a Chilean poet, he's on the side of the Communists, I'm against them. So I felt he was behaving very wisely in avoiding a meeting that would have been quite uncomfortable for both of us.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Page 96.
Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (1968)

People , Lie , Books , Law

“I have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification.”

Jorge Luis Borges

He sospechado alguna vez que la única cosa sin misterio es la felicidad, porque se justifica por sí sola.
"Unworthy", in Brodie's Report (1970); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Variant: I have thought from time to time that the only thing without mystery is happiness, since it justifies itself.

Happiness

“Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures. In one of them I am your enemy.”

Jorge Luis Borges

The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths

Time , Future

“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

"The Waiting" translated by James E. Irby (1959)

Solitude , Memory

“There's no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one.”

Jorge Luis Borges

"Ibn-Hakim Al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth", in The Aleph (1949); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)

Universe

“He transforms all concepts into incommunicable, solidified objects. To refute him is to become contaminated with unreality.”

Jorge Luis Borges

On F. H. Bradley in "Avatars of the Tortoise"
Discussion (1932)

“Imprecision is tolerable and verisimilar in literature, because we always tend towards it in life.”

Jorge Luis Borges

"The Postulation of Reality" ["La postulación de la realidad"] (1931)
Discussion (1932)

Life , Literature

“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 book Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Variant translation: Mirrors and copulation are obscene, for they increase the numbers of mankind.
Cf. "Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv", in A Universal History of Iniquity (1935)
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)

“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 book Ficciones

"Funes the Memorious" ["Funes El Memorioso"] (1944); also published in Labyrinths (1964)
Ficciones (1944)

Men , Truth

“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 book Other Inquisitions

"New Refutation of Time"
Other Inquisitions (1952)

Thinking , Solitude , Memory , Night

“Being conservative is a way of being skeptic.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Ser conservador es una forma de ser escéptico.
Interview in Revista Extra (July 1976) http://www.sololiteratura.com/bor/borsellamaborges.htm

Way

“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 book Other Inquisitions

"Nathaniel Hawthorne"
Other Inquisitions (1952)

Life , Time , Reading

“Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case.”

Jorge Luis Borges

"Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)

Idea , Understanding , Future

“That one individual should awaken in another memories that belong to still a third is an obvious paradox.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Evaristo Carriego: A Book About Old-Time Buenos Aires

Evaristo Carriego (1930) Ch. 2

Memory

“"Maybe this crime belongs to the history of Jewish superstitions," murmmured Lönnrot.
"Like Christianity," the editor put in.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Ficciones

"Death and the Compass"
Ficciones (1944)

History

“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 book Other Inquisitions

"The Flower of Coleridge" ["La flor de Coleridge"] — The title of this work makes reference to a line by Samuel Coleridge in Anima Poetæ : From the Unpublished Note-books of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1895), p. 282 : "If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake — Aye, what then?"
Other Inquisitions (1952)

Literature

“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 book The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim

"The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" (1935)

Art

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

Jorge Luis Borges

Richard Burgin, Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges, Holt, Rhinehart, & Winston, 1968. Pages 93-94.
Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (1968)

World , Thinking

“Toward dawn, he dreamed that he was in hiding, in one of the naves of the Clementine Library. What are you looking for? a librarian wearing dark glasses asked him. I'm looking for God, Hladik replied. God, the librarian said, is in one of the letters on one of the pages of one of the four hundred thousand volumes in the Clementine. My parents and my parents' parents searched for that letter; I myself have gone blind searching for it.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Ficciones

"The Secret Miracle"
Ficciones (1944)

God , Dreams , Search , Parent

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

Jorge Luis Borges book Other Inquisitions

Other Inquisitions (1952), The Modesty of History

World , History , Time

“I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

First lines
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)