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

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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
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

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The possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend to be frightful.
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To bless thine enemy is a good way to satisfy thy vanity.
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It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.
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I know of one semibarbarous zone whose librarians repudiate the vain and superstitious habit of trying to find sense in books, equating such a quest with attempting to find meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines on the palms of one's hand.
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There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.
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If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his reader to believe it.
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Art always opts for the individual, the concrete art is not Platonic.
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I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks.
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My friends tell me that I am an intruder, that I don't really write when I attempt poetry. But those of my friends who write in prose say that I'm no writer when I attempt prose. So really I don't know what to do, I'm in a quandary.
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Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process.
Jorge Luis Borges
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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
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There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music.
Jorge Luis Borges
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If I write a fantastic story, I'm not writing something willful. On the contrary, I am writing something that stands for my feelings, or for my thoughts. So that, in a sense, a fantastic story is as real and perhaps more real than a mere circumstantial story. Because after all, circumstances come and go, and symbols remain.
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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Your unforgivable sins do not allow you to see my splendor.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Time, which despoils castles, enriches verses.
Jorge Luis Borges
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I secretly assumed, as poets do, The duty on me to define the moon.
Jorge Luis Borges
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In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice in murder, courage in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.
Jorge Luis Borges
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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