Jorge Luis Borges citations

Page 6

C’est un philosophe très connu.
Un filósofo argentino y yo conversábamos una vez sobre el tema del tiempo. Y el filósofo dijo: “En cuanto a esto, se hicieron muchos progresos en los últimos años”. Y yo pensé que si le hubiera hecho una pregunta acerca del espacio, seguramente él me hubiera respondido: “En cuanto a esto, se hicieron muchos progresos en los últimos cien metros”. Es un filósofo muy conocido.
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Variante: De toutes les villes du monde. de toutes les patries intimes qu'un homme cherche à mériter au cours de ses voyages, Genève me semble la plus propice au bonheur.

¿Por qué voy a morirme, si nunca lo he hecho antes? ¿Por qué voy a cometer un acto tan ajeno a mis hábitos? Es como si me dijeran que voy a ser buzo o domador o algo así, ¿no?
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Conversations à Buenos Aires, 1996

Conversations à Buenos Aires, 1996

Conversations à Buenos Aires, 1996

Ficciones

El hecho es que cada escritor crea sus precursores. Su labor modifica nuestra concepción del pasado, como ha de modificar el futuro.
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Essais

Introduction du livre d'Henry James

Fictions, 1944

Essais

Fictions, 1944

Fictions, 1944

Gardel y yo tenemos algo en común: a ninguno de los dos nos gusta el tango.
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Yo creo que la teología es una rama de la literatura fantástica. Otra es el psicoanálisis.
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Conversations à Buenos Aires, 1996

Essais

The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

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

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

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

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

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)

Cabe ir más lejos; cabe sospechar que no hay universo en el sentido orgánico, unificador, que tiene esa ambiciosa palabra. Si lo hay, falta conjeturar su propósito; falta conjeturar las palabras, las definiciones, las etimologías, las sinonimias, del secreto diccionario de Dios.
As translated by Lilia Graciela Vázquez
Other Inquisitions (1952), The Analytical Language of John Wilkins
Variante: We can go further; we suspect that there is no universe in the organic, unifying sense of that ambitious word. If there is, we must conjecture its purpose; we must conjecture the words, the definitions, the etymologies, the synonyms, from the secret dictionary of God.

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

"New Refutation of Time"
Other Inquisitions (1952)

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

"Nathaniel Hawthorne"
Other Inquisitions (1952)

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

Evaristo Carriego (1930) Ch. 2

"Death and the Compass"
Ficciones (1944)

"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)

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

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

"The Secret Miracle"
Ficciones (1944)

Other Inquisitions (1952), The Modesty of History

First lines
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)

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

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Variante: This happy conjecture affirmed that there is only one subject, that this indivisible subject is every being in the universe and that these beings are the organs and masks of the divinity.

Dr. Brodie's Report [El informe de Brodie] (1970)

Un hombre se propone la tarea de dibujar el mundo. A lo largo de los años puebla un espacio con imágenes de provincias, de reinos, de montañas, de bahías, de naves, de islas, de peces, de habitaciones, de instrumentos, de astros, de caballos y de personas. Poco antes de morir, descubre que ese paciente laberinto de líneas traza la imagen de su cara.
Epilogue
Variant translation: A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face.
Dreamtigers (1960)

"To the Reader" ["A quien leyere"], preface to Fervor of Buenos Aires [Fervor de Buenos Aires] (1923)

La duda es uno de los nombres de la inteligencia.
As quoted in Diccionario privado de Jorge Luis Borges (1979) edited by Blas Matamoro

Variant translation: I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left... Whosoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished, should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths

"Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" ["Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote"]
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)

Comparing film and stage theatre in "The Divine Comedy" (1977)

"Gauchesque Poetry" ["La poesía gauchesca"]
Discussion (1932)