Quote

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

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
Men
Lasts
Task
Last
Unhappy
Art
Happenings
Music
Tasks
Feel
Happening
Continuously
Feels
Memory
Fulfill
Something
Duty
Transform
Things
Memories
Symbols

More quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

Image
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
Image
Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
I have used the philosophers' ideas for my own private literary purposes, but I don't think that I'm a thinker. I suppose that my thinking has been done for me by Berkeley, by Hume, by Schopenhauer, by Mauthner perhaps.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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
Image
When I write, I do it urged by an intimate necessity. I don't have in mind an exclusive public, or a public of multitudes, I don't think in either thing. I think about expressing what I want to say. I try to do it in the simplest way possible.
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
Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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
Image
There are those who seek the love of a woman to forget her, to not think about her.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
In general, every country has the language it deserves.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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
Image
I'm not interested in the fact that a writer may label himself as being intellectual or anti-intellectual. l'm really interested in the stuff he's turning out.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Imprecision is tolerable and verisimilar in literature, because we always tend towards it in life.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Time is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
When one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a man that observes and narrates it and no longer the man that performed it.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks.
Jorge Luis Borges