Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges KBE; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986), was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language literature. His best-known books, Ficcionesand El Aleph, published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion...
NationalityArgentinian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 August 1899
mystery sometimes justification
I have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification.
vanity enemy way
To bless thine enemy is a good way to satisfy thy vanity.
dream writing thinking
In our dreams (writes Coleridge) images represent the sensations we think they cause; we do not feel horror because we are threatened by a sphinx; we dream of a sphinx in order to explain the horror we feel.
done ashamed feels
I never reread what I've written. I'm far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I've done.
god men mind
The steps a man takes from the day of his birth until that of his death trace in time an inconcievable figure. The Divine Mind intuitively grasps that form immediately, as men do a triangle.
writing literature
All literature, is, finally autobiographical.
future yesterday irrevocable
The future is as irrevocable as an inflexible yesterday.
evil upset dignity
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.
world mortality form
What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose?
literature
One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.
numbers infinite gallery
The universe is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries.
dream thinking body
I am almost sure to be blotted out by death, but sometimes I think it is not impossible that I may continue to live in some other manner after my physical death . Or, as Hamlet wonders, what dreams will come when we leave this body?
writing thinking voice
Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this; I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do - when one has found one's natural voice, one's rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful.
twilight writing past
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?