Jorge Luis Borges cytaty (258 cytatów, strona 6)

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

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

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

“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.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

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

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

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

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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.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

“One of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had stated that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of man.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka 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)

“We can suspect that there is no universe in the organic, unifying sense, that this ambitious term has. If there is a universe, its aim is not conjectured yet; we have not yet conjectured the words, the definitions, the etymologies, the synonyms, from the secret dictionary of God.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

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
Wariant: 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.

“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.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Ficciones

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

“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.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Other Inquisitions

"New Refutation of Time"
Other Inquisitions (1952)

“Being conservative is a way of being skeptic.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

“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.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Other Inquisitions

"Nathaniel Hawthorne"
Other Inquisitions (1952)

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

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

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

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

Evaristo Carriego (1930) Ch. 2

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

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Ficciones

"Death and the Compass"
Ficciones (1944)

“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.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka 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)

“Mir Bahadur Ali is, as we have seen, incapable of evading the most vulgar of art's temptations: that of being a genius.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim

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

“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.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

“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.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Ficciones

"The Secret Miracle"
Ficciones (1944)

“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.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Other Inquisitions

Other Inquisitions (1952), The Modesty of History

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

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

First lines
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)

“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.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

“One thinker no less brilliant than the heresiarch himself, but in the orthodox tradition, advanced a most daring hypothesis. This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.”

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Jorge Luis Borges książka Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Wariant: 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.

“My advanced age has taught me the resignation of being Borges.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.”

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Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

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)

“If the pages of this book contain some successful verse, the reader must excuse me the discourtesy of having usurped it first. Our nothingness differs little; it is a trivial and chance circumstance that you should be the reader of these exercises and I their author.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

“Doubt is one of the names of intelligence.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

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

“I foresee that man will resign himself each day to more atrocious undertakings; soon there will be no one but warriors and brigands; I give them this counsel: The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.”

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Jorge Luis Borges

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