Explore Quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.

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

I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks.

Life and death have been lacking in my life.

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

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

The central problem of novel-writing is causality.

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

Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art.

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

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

I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left...

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.

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.

One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite.

Reality is not always probable, or likely.

In general, every country has the language it deserves.

The original is unfaithful to the translation.

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.

Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.