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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

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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
Way
Demon
Men
Immortal
Like
Philosopher
World
Hero
Exist
Single
Saying
Cornelius
Anyone
Tedious

More quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

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The possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend to be frightful.
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I would define the baroque as that style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities, and that borders on self-caricature. The baroque is the final stage in all art, when art flaunts and squanders its resources.
Jorge Luis Borges
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It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Reality favors symmetry.
Jorge Luis Borges
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We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe.
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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.
Jorge Luis Borges
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We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.
Jorge Luis Borges
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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
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The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all of these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy.
Jorge Luis Borges
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A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words—or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols—spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word.
Jorge Luis Borges
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When you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.
Jorge Luis Borges
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To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.
Jorge Luis Borges
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From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me.
Jorge Luis Borges
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I might accept immortality, if I had to do it. But I would prefer - if there is any afterlife - to know nothing whatever about Borges, about his experiences in this world.
Jorge Luis Borges
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I suppose identity depends on memory. And if my memory is blotted out, then I wonder if I exist - I mean, if I am the same person. Of course, I don't have to solve that problem. It's up to God, if any.
Jorge Luis Borges
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The visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it.
Jorge Luis Borges
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The art of writing is mysterious the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse to that of Poe, who reasoned, or feigned to reason, that the writing of a poem is an act of the intelligence. It never fails to amaze me that the classics hold a romantic theory of poetry, and a romantic poet a classical theory.
Jorge Luis Borges
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A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Perhaps the apparent favor of the universe is no more than the crocodile grin of a Doberman breathing hard and about to be hungry?
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