Jorge Luis Borges: Thing

“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 (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths
Context: 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.

Books , Imagination

“Only one thing is more admirable than the admirable reply of the Saxon king: that an Icelander, a man of the lineage of the vanquished, has perpetuated the reply.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Other Inquisitions

Other Inquisitions (1952), The Modesty of History
Context: Only one thing is more admirable than the admirable reply of the Saxon king: that an Icelander, a man of the lineage of the vanquished, has perpetuated the reply. It is as if a Carthaginian had bequeathed to us the memory of the exploit of Regulus. Saxo Grammaticus wrote with justification in his Gesta Danorum: "The men of Thule [Iceland] are very fond of learning and of recording the history of all peoples and they are equally pleased to reveal the excellences of others or of themselves."
Not the day when the Saxon said the words, but the day when an enemy perpetuated them, was the historic date. A date that is a prophecy of something still in the future: the day when races and nations will be cast into oblivion, and the solidarity of all mankind will be established.

“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-four Conversations with Borges, Including a Selection of Poems: Interviews by Roberto Alifano, 1981–1983 (1984)

Art , Feeling , Thinking , Personality

“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

Age , Motivational

“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 Dreamtigers

Source: Dreamtigers

“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

World , Music , Color , Sea

“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

Art , Music , Feeling , Memory

“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...”

Jorge Luis Borges

The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths
Source: Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

Men , Sea

“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)

“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 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

“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

“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.

“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

“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 suppose he had the good luck to be executed, no? I had an hour's chat with him in Buenos Aires. He struck me as a kind of play actor, no? Living up to a certain role. I mean, being a professional Andalusian… But in the case of Lorca, it was very strange because I lived in Andalusia and the Andalusians aren't a bit like that. His were stage Andalusians. Maybe he thought that in Buenos Aires he had to live up to that character, but in Andalusia, people are not like that. In fact, if you are in Andalusia, if you are talking to a man of letters and you speak to him about bullfights, he'll say, 'Oh well, that sort of this pleases people, I suppose, but really the torero works in no danger whatsoever. Because they are bored by these things, because every writer is bored by the local color in his own country. Well, when I met Lorca, he was being a professional Andalusian… Besides, Lorca wanted to astonish us. He said to me that he was very troubled about a very important figure in the contemporary world. A character in whom he could see all the tragedy of American life. And then he went on in this way until I asked him who was this character and it turned out this character was Mickey Mouse. I suppose he was trying to be clever. And I thought, 'That's the kind of thing you say when you are very, very young and you want to astonish somebody.' But after all, he was a grown man, he had no need, he could have talked in a different way. But when he started in about Mickey Mouse being a symbol of America, there was a friend of mine there and he looked at me and I looked at him and we both walked away because we were too old for that kind of game, no? Even at that time.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Richard Burgin, Conversation with Jorge Luis Borges, pages 92-93.
Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (1968)

Life , People , World , Color