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

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
Unknown
State
Known
States
Greeks
Uncertainty
Greek

More quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

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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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Time broadens the scope of verses and I know of some which, like music, are everything for all men.
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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.
Jorge Luis Borges
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In fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects.
Jorge Luis Borges
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I think most people are more important than their opinions.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Every man should be capable of all ideas.
Jorge Luis Borges
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The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.
Jorge Luis Borges
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To arrange a library is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism.
Jorge Luis Borges
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You don't have to try to be contemporary. You are already contemporary. What one has in mythology is being evolved all the time. Personally, I think I can do with Greek and Old Norse mythology. For example, I don't think I stand in need of planes or of railways or of cars.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Kafka had the sense of guilt. I don't think I have because I don't believe in free will. Because what I have done has been done, well, for me or through me. But I haven't done it really. But I don't believe in free will, I can't feel guilty.
Jorge Luis Borges
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To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.
Jorge Luis Borges
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I suppose every poet has his own private mythology. Maybe he's unaware of it. People tell me that I have evolved a private mythology of tigers, of blades, of labyrinths, and Im unaware of the fact this is so. My readers are finding it all the time. But I think perhaps that is the duty of poet.
Jorge Luis Borges
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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
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What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?
Jorge Luis Borges
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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.
Jorge Luis Borges
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The people of Tlön are taught that the act of counting modifies the amount counted, turning indefinites into definites. The fact that several persons counting the same quantity come to the same result is for the psychologists of Tlön an example of the association of ideas or of memorization.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Poetry springs from something deeper it's beyond intelligence.
Jorge Luis Borges
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I have preferred to teach my students not English literature but my love for certain authors, or, even better, certain pages, or even better than that, certain lines. One falls in love with a line, then with a page, then with an author. Well, why not? It is a beautiful process.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Reading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.
Jorge Luis Borges
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If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his reader to believe it.
Jorge Luis Borges