Jorge Luis Borges cytaty (258 cytatów, strona 4)

Źródło: Noc, kiedy na południu nad nim czuwali w: E. Stachura, Wiersze, poematy, piosenki, przekłady, wyd. Czytelnik, Warszawa 1982, s. 332, tłum. Edward Stachura.

O śmierci , O przyjaźni , O książkach , O świecie

„Potem pomyślał, że rzeczywistość nie pokrywa się na ogół z przewidywaniami; z przewrotną logiką wywnioskował stąd, że przewidzieć jakąś okoliczność to udaremnić jej realizację. Wierny tej wątłej magii wymyślał okrutne szczegóły po to, aby się one nie wydarzyły.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Opowiadania
Źródło: opowiadanie Tajemny cud

O rzeczywostości

„Mówić to popadać w tautologie.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Opowiadania
Źródło: opowiadanie Biblioteka Babel

„Tak bowiem na początku literatury, jak i na końcu, jest mit.”

Jorge Luis Borges

O literaturze

„Między początkiem dnia a nocą jest otchłań
świateł i lęków, i agonii;
twarz, która przegląda się w nocnych
zużytych lustrach, to nie ta sama twarz, obca.
Ulotne dzisiaj wątłe jest i to jest wieczność;
na inne nie licz Niebo, ani na inne Piekło.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Źródło: Chwila w: E. Stachura, Wiersze, poematy, piosenki, przekłady, wyd. Czytelnik, Warszawa 1982, s. 360, tłum. Edward Stachura.

O piekle , O świetle

„Jeżeli wieczność istnieje, śmierć jest tylko żartem.”

Jorge Luis Borges

O śmierci

„Znam pewien labirynt grecki, złożony z jedynej linii prostej. W tej linii zagubiło się już tylu filozofów, że z łatwością może się zgubić zwykły detektyw.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Opowiadania
Źródło: opowiadanie Śmierć i busola

O śmierci

„O literaturze powiem to, co można bez wątpienia rzec o duszy: każdy powinien osiągnąć zbawienie, a można je osiągnąć tylko pokonując błędy.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Źródło: Michał Sprusiński, posłowie do Księgi piasku

O duszy , O literaturze

„Wydaje mi się, że jako pisarz popełniłem już wszystkie możliwe błędy, co zresztą jest jedyną drogą do prawdziwego pisarstwa.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Źródło: Michał Sprusiński, posłowie do Księgi piasku

„Jednej tylko rzeczy nie ma. To zapomnienie.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Źródło: Everness w: E. Stachura, Wiersze, poematy, piosenki, przekłady, wyd. Czytelnik, Warszawa 1982, s. 366, tłum. Edward Stachura.

Jorge Luis Borges: Cytaty po angielsku

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

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

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Jorge Luis Borges

Źródło: The Book of Imaginary Beings

“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.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Ficciones

"The Secret Miracle"; Variant: 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.
Źródło: Ficciones (1944)

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

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Jorge Luis Borges

Źródło: The Aleph and Other Stories

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

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Jorge Luis Borges

Źródło: Collected Fictions

“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.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

Źródło: The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

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

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

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Jorge Luis Borges

Źródło: Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

“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...”

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

“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.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Other Inquisitions

"Note on (toward) Bernard Shaw"
Variant translation: A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time — this one, for instance — as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like.
Other Inquisitions (1952)

“It's a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be some kind of library.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

Wariant: I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

“Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

"A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz", in The Aleph (1949); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Variant: Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment — the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

“Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Ficciones

Źródło: Ficciones

“God must not engage in theology. The writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

“It also occurred to him that throughout history, humankind has told two stories: the story of a lost ship sailing the Mediterranean seas in quest of a beloved isle, and the story of a god who allows himself to be crucified on Golgotha.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

Źródło: Collected Fictions

“When I wake up, I wake to something worse. It’s the astonishment of being myself”

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Jorge Luis Borges

“In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Ficciones

"Three Versions of Judas"
Ficciones (1944)

“For one of those gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Para uno de esos gnosticos, el visible universo era una ilusion o (mas precisamente) un sofisma. Los espejos y la paternidad son abominables porque lo multiplican y lo divulgan.
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)

“I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out post cards... I saw the oblique shadow of some ferns on the floor of a hot-house; I saw tigers, emboli, bison, ground swells and armies; I saw all the ants in the world.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

"The Aleph" ["El Aleph"] (1945)

“Villari took no notice of them because the idea of a coincidence between art and reality was alien to him. Unlike people who read novels, he never saw himself as a character in a work of art.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

“It is known that Whistler when asked how long it took him to paint one of his "nocturnes" answered: "All of my life." With the same rigor he could have said that all of the centuries that preceded the moment when he painted were necessary. From that correct application of the law of causality it follows that the slightest event presupposes the inconceivable universe and, conversely, that the universe needs even the slightest of events.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

"Gauchesque Poetry"
Discussion (1932)

“The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

"Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv", in A Universal History of Iniquity (1935); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998). Cf. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)

“I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

“Do you want to see what human eyes have never seen? Look at the moon. Do you want to hear what ears have never heard? Listen to the bird's cry. Do you want to touch what hands have never touched? Touch the earth. Verily I say that God is about to create the world.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka The Theologians

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

“The geometry of Tlön comprises two somewhat different disciplines: the visual and the tactile. The latter corresponds to our own geometry and is subordinated to the first.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)

“His many years had reduced and polished him the way water smooths and polishes a stone or generations of men polish a proverb.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka The Man on the Threshold

"The Man on the Threshold", in The Aleph (1949); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998). Cf. "The South" in Ficciones" (1944)

“It is no exaggeration to state that the classic culture of Tlön comprises only one discipline: psychology. All others are subordinated to it. I have said that the men of this planet conceive the universe as a series of mental processes which do not develop in space but successively in time.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)

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

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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