Quote

The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.

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
Mirrors
Paternity
Errors
Abominable
Earth
Parody
Multiply
Affirm
Inhabit
Incompetent
Error

More quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

Image
Reality is partial to symmetry and slight anachronisms
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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
Image
When you come right down to it, opinions are the most superficial things about anyone
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
I try to avoid purple patches, fine writing, all that kind of thing... because I think they're a mistake. And then sometimes it comes through and sometimes it doesn't, but that's not up to me. It's up to chance.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Poetry springs from something deeper it's beyond intelligence.
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
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
Image
The future has no other reality than as present hope, and the past is no more than present memory.
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
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
Image
In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
It means much to have loved, to have been happy, to have laid my hand on the living Garden, even for a day.
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
If space is infinite, we may be at any point in space. If time is infinite, we may be at any point in time.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
I believe books will never disappear. It is impossible for it to happen. Of all man's diverse tools, undoubtedly the most astounding are his books... If books were to disappear, history would disappear. So would man.
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
We (the indivisible divinity that works in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and firm in time, but we have allowed slight, and eternal, bits of the irrational to form part of its architecture so as to know that it is false.
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
The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.
Jorge Luis Borges