“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)

Original

Que el cielo exista, aunque nuestro lugar sea el infierno.

Variant: Que el cielo exista, aunque mi lugar sea el infierno.
Source: "Deutsches Requiem", de "El Aleph".

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Jorge Luis Borges photo
Jorge Luis Borges 213
Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator… 1899–1986

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