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

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
Error
Mirrors
Paternity
Errors
Abominable
Earth
Parody
Multiply
Affirm
Inhabit
Incompetent

More quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

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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
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Time is the tiger that devours me, but I am that tiger.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Reality is not always probable, or likely.
Jorge Luis Borges
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No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.
Jorge Luis Borges
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The art of writing is mysterious the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse to that of Poe, who reasoned, or feigned to reason, that the writing of a poem is an act of the intelligence. It never fails to amaze me that the classics hold a romantic theory of poetry, and a romantic poet a classical theory.
Jorge Luis Borges
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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
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Life and death have been lacking in my life.
Jorge Luis Borges
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I have no personal system of philosophy. I never attempt to do that. I am merely a man of letters.
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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Reality favors symmetry.
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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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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From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me.
Jorge Luis Borges
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The future has no other reality than as present hope, and the past is no more than present memory.
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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I have always come to life after coming to books.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Films are even stranger, for what we are seeing are not disguised people but photographs of disguised people, and yet we believe them while the film is being shown.
Jorge Luis Borges
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The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said.
Jorge Luis Borges
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A . . . poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.
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