Quote

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.

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
Emotion
Personally
Books
Offer
Read
Emotions
Book
Ancient
Commentaries
Writing
Criticism
Hedonistic
Never
Merely
Commentary
Offers
Aesthetic
Reader
Ignore

More quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

Image
The European and the North American consider that a book that has been awarded any kind of prize must be good the Argentine allows for the possibility that the book might not be bad, despite the prize.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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
Image
What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose?
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Lully's machine, Mill's fear and Lasswitz's chaotic library can be the subject of jokes, but they exaggerate a propensity which is common: making metaphysics and the arts into a kind of play with combinations.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Then he reflected that reality does not usually coincide with our anticipation of it with a logic of his own he inferred that to forsee a circumstantial detail is to prevent its happening. Trusting in this weak magic, he invented, so that they would not happen, the most gruesome details.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
I hardly know what I'm going to write - an article, a story, a poem in free verse - or in some regular form. I only know that when I have the first sentence. And when the first sentence makes a kind of pattern, then I find out the kind of rhythm I'm looking for.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
As the end approaches, there are no longer any images from memory - there are only words.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
A writer should have another lifetime to see if he's appreciated.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
This web of time--the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore eachother through the centuries--embrace every posibility.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
What I'm really concerned about is reaching one person. And that person may be myself for all I know.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but ... hypotheses may not.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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.
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
On the floor, and hanging on to the bar, squatted an old man, immobile as an object. His years had reduced and polished him as water does a stone or the generations of men do a sentence.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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
Image
Translations are a partial and precious documentation of the changes the text suffers.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
The mathematical sciences wield their particular language made of digits and signs, no less subtle than any other.
Jorge Luis Borges