“You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?”
Jorge Luis Borges book The Library of Babel
Source: The Library of Babel
Quotes from bookThe Library of Babel
Jorge Luis BorgesOriginal title La biblioteca de Babel (Spanish, 1941)
"The Library of Babel" is a short story by Argentine author and librarian Jorge Luis Borges , conceiving of a universe in the form of a vast library containing all possible 410-page books of a certain format and character set.
“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)
Jorge Luis Borges book The Library of Babel
"The Library of Babel" ["La Biblioteca de Babel"] (1941) First lines
Jorge Luis Borges book The Library of Babel
"The Library of Babel" (1941); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
