Jorge Luis Borges quotes

Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine writer, poet, and essayist, widely recognized as one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century. His works explore themes of labyrinths, mirrors, and infinite realities through a unique blend of philosophy and imagination. He remains an enduring influence on world literature and modern narrative forms. Here are 237 of his quotes:

The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Jorge Luis Borges

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.

Jorge Luis Borges

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.

Jorge Luis Borges

To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.

Jorge Luis Borges

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.

Jorge Luis Borges

There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.

Jorge Luis Borges

Reading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.

Jorge Luis Borges

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

Jorge Luis Borges

To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.

Jorge Luis Borges

I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.

Jorge Luis Borges

Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety.

Jorge Luis Borges

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.

Jorge Luis Borges

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.

Jorge Luis Borges

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.

Jorge Luis Borges

My undertaking is not difficult, essentially... I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.

Jorge Luis Borges

Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic.

Jorge Luis Borges

The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.

Jorge Luis Borges

Life and death have been lacking in my life.

Jorge Luis Borges

May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell.

Jorge Luis Borges

The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.

Jorge Luis Borges

Time can't be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different.

Jorge Luis Borges