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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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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
Things
Realizing
Age
Place
Better
Firsts
Worse
First
Reach
Done
Couldn
Much
Realize

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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In vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman’s eyes. You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, you have not written the poem.
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As to my writing short pieces, there are two reasons I can give you. The first is my invincible laziness. The second is that I've always been fond of short stories, and it always took me some trouble to get through a novel.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Time, which despoils castles, enriches verses.
Jorge Luis Borges
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The certainty that everything has already been written annuls us, or renders us phantasmal.
Jorge Luis Borges
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All literature, is, finally autobiographical.
Jorge Luis Borges
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I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government.
Jorge Luis Borges
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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
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A writer's work is the product of laziness.
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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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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I, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man, myself alone. From out of a whirlwind the voice of God replied: I am not, either. I dreamed the world the way you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare: one of the forms of my dream was you, who, like me, are many and one.
Jorge Luis Borges
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We did meet forty years ago. At that time we were both influenced by Whitman and I said, jokingly in part, 'I don't think anything can be done in Spanish, do you?' Neruda agreed, but we decided it was too late for us to write our verse in English. We'd have to make the best of a second-rate literature.
Jorge Luis Borges
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I don't think esthetic schools are important. What is important is the use that is made of them, or whatever the individual writer does.
Jorge Luis Borges
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I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.
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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My father and he had cemented one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.
Jorge Luis Borges
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I know that when I think of myself as being utterly worn out, when I think that somehow I have nothing more to write, then something is happening within me. And, in due course, it bubbles up it comes to the surface, and then I do my best to listen. But there's nothing mystical about all this. I suppose all writers do the same.
Jorge Luis Borges