82 Top Quotes By Jorge Luis Borges, The Author Of El Aleph
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges, was a short story writer, editor, essayist and critic from Argentina, who is regarded as one of the most accomplished short story writers in the world. Borges was educated in Switzerland and travelled across during his childhood, that gave him a unique worldview in his literary pursiuts.Borges wrote in Spanish and remains one of the icons of Spanish literature, having written such masterpieces like El Aleph and Ficciones, both being collections of short stories. His books of collected stories contained stories that were actually interlinked and was a unique story telling style, that made him a hugely popular author of the 1940s. Other than being a giant of Spanish literature in his own right, Borges also influenced the writer who emerged over the years. He was a pioneer ahead of his time and it is believed that he was the true pioneer of magic realism in literature. According to a critic, his book of collected short stories ‘A Universal His-tory of Infamy’ is perhaps the first instance of magic realism. Borges’ stories and life also produced a vast number of quotes that could be perfectly applicable in the modern world. Here are some of the selected ones.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.
I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.
Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.
Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.
To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.
Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.
Reality is not always probable, or likely.
Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.
Life itself is a quotation.
Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.
So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.
Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.
The original is unfaithful to the translation.
No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.
Nothing is built on stone; All is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.
To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.
Besides, rereading, not reading, is what counts.
You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?
I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.
Time is the tiger that devours me, but I am that tiger.
Man's memory shapes Its own Eden within
There are those who seek the love of a woman to forget her, to not think about her.
Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety.
When you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.
What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?
