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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.

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
Sense
Vain
Superstitious
Hands
Meaning
Librarian
Dream
Habit
Chaotic
Find
Whose
Palms
Book
Dreams
Quests
Trying
Lines
Quest
Equating
Hand
Attempting
Repudiate
Books
Zone
Librarians

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The possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend to be frightful.
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I saw a sunset in Queretaro that seemed to reflect the color of a rose in Bengal.
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The thought came over me that never would one full and absolute moment, containing all the others, justify my life, that all of my instants would be provisional phases, annihilators of the past turned to face the future, and that beyond the episodic, the present, the circumstantial, we were nobody.
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To bless thine enemy is a good way to satisfy thy vanity.
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When you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.
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All literature, is, finally autobiographical.
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For me, beauty is a physical sensation, something we feel with our whole body. It is not the result of judgement. We do not arrive at it by way of rules. We either feel beauty or we don't.
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It also occurred to him that throughout history, humankind has told two stories: the story of a lost ship sailing the Mediterranean seas in quest of a beloved isle, and the story of a god who allows himself to be crucified on Golgotha.
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The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration.
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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.
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The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.
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Everything touches everything.
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What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose?
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Reality is not always probable, or likely.
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I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left...
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Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.
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To arrange a library is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism.
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I can’t talk about my books. I have written them and tried to forget them. I have written once, and readers have read me many times, no? I try to think of what I wrote, it’s very unhealthy to think about the past, the case of elegies is very sad, as much as the case of complaints.
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Writing is only a guided dream.
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In fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects.
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