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The man who acquires an encyclopedia does not thereby acquire every line, every paragraph, every page, and every illustration he acquires the possibility of becoming familiar with one and another of those things.

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
Possibility
Encyclopedia
Line
Illustration
Becoming
Paragraph
Lines
Thereby
Another
Acquire
Doe
Page
Every
Familiar
Things
Pages
Acquires

More quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

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Poets, like the blind, can see in the dark.
Jorge Luis Borges
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You may win your heart's desire, but in the end you're cheated of it by death.
Jorge Luis Borges
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We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe.
Jorge Luis Borges
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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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I am not sure of anything, I know nothing . . . can you imagine that I don't even know the date of my own death?
Jorge Luis Borges
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I have committed the worst of sins one can commit... I have not been happy.
Jorge Luis Borges
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I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government.
Jorge Luis Borges
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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.
Jorge Luis Borges
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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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In vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman’s eyes. You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, you have not written the poem.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but ... hypotheses may not.
Jorge Luis Borges
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There are those who seek the love of a woman to forget her, to not think about her.
Jorge Luis Borges
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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
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I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks.
Jorge Luis Borges
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I have always come to life after coming to books.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Canada is so far away it hardly exists.
Jorge Luis Borges
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The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Time, which despoils castles, enriches verses.
Jorge Luis Borges
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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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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