Jorge Luis Borges quotes - page 4

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:

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 that I have visited, all my ancestors.

Jorge Luis Borges

Reality is not always probable, or likely. But if you're writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader's imagination will reject it.

Jorge Luis Borges

For one of those gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it.

Jorge Luis Borges

A labyrinth of symbols... An invisible labyrinth of time.

Jorge Luis Borges

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.

Jorge Luis Borges

I have committed the worst of sins one can commit... I have not been happy.

Jorge Luis Borges

A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

Jorge Luis Borges

Time, which despoils castles, enriches verses.

Jorge Luis Borges

Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.

Jorge Luis Borges

In the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry.

Jorge Luis Borges

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.

Jorge Luis Borges

That history should have imitated history was already sufficiently marvellous; that history should imitate literature is inconceivable....

Jorge Luis Borges

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.

Jorge Luis Borges

Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.

Jorge Luis Borges

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.

Jorge Luis Borges

The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.

Jorge Luis Borges

From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me.

Jorge Luis Borges

In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

Jorge Luis Borges

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.

Jorge Luis Borges

You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?

Jorge Luis Borges

I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.

Jorge Luis Borges

There are those who seek the love of a woman to forget her, to not think about her.

Jorge Luis Borges