Quote

To be immortal is commonplace except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

Jorge Luis Borges

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Death
Corny
Men
Commonplace
Immortal
Ignorant
Creatures
Except
Terrible
Divine
Incomprehensible

More quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

Image
The time for your labor has been granted.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as ‘The Masses’. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Many people have thought of me as a thinker, as a philosopher, or even as a mystic. Well the truth is that though I have found reality perplexing enough - in fact, I find it gets more perplexing all the time - I never think of myself as a thinker.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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
Image
As the end approaches, there are no longer any images from memory - there are only words.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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
Image
Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Reading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
All writing is dreaming
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Captivated by its discipline, humanity forgets and goes on forgetting that it is the discipline of chess players, not of angels.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Poetry springs from something deeper it's beyond intelligence.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Reality is partial to symmetry and slight anachronisms
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Films are even stranger, for what we are seeing are not disguised people but photographs of disguised people, and yet we believe them while the film is being shown.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
I am interested in the past. Perhaps one of the reasons is we cannot make, cannot change the past. I mean you can hardly unmake the present. But the past after all is merely to say a memory, a dream. You know my own past seems continually changed when I am remembering it, or reading things that are interesting to me.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
My father and he had cemented one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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