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

Jorge Luis Borges

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Jorge Luis Borges
Age: 86 †
Born: 1899
Born: August 24
Died: 1986
Died: March 26
Librarian
Literary Critic
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Buenos Ayres
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges
Chorche Louis Borches
Jorge Luis Borges Acevedo
Horhe Luis Borhes
J. L. Borges
H. Bustos Domecq
Khorkhe Luyis Borkhes
Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo
Much
Posterity
Flattery
Contemporary
Worth
Nothing

More quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

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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.
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Each thing implies the universe.
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My father and he had cemented one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.
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Translations are a partial and precious documentation of the changes the text suffers.
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The possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend to be frightful.
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May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell.
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While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one
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I secretly assumed, as poets do, The duty on me to define the moon.
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I am not sure of anything, I know nothing . . . can you imagine that I don't even know the date of my own death?
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Imprecision is tolerable and verisimilar in literature, because we always tend towards it in life.
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The two important facts I should say, are emotion, and then words arising from emotion. I don't think you can write in an emotionless way. If you attempt it, the result is artificial. I don't like that kind of writing. I think that if a poem is really great, you should think of it as having written itself despite the author. It should flow.
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The future is as irrevocable as an inflexible yesterday.
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To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.
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La duda es uno de los nombres de la inteligencia.
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If I write a fantastic story, I'm not writing something willful. On the contrary, I am writing something that stands for my feelings, or for my thoughts. So that, in a sense, a fantastic story is as real and perhaps more real than a mere circumstantial story. Because after all, circumstances come and go, and symbols remain.
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A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face.
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If I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father's library.
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As a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight.
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That is what always happens: we never know whether we are victors or whether we are defeated.
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Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. For that reason, it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save it.
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