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Many people have thought of me as a thinker, as a philosopher, or even as a mystic. Well the truth is that though I have found reality perplexing enough - in fact, I find it gets more perplexing all the time - I never think of myself as a thinker.

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
People
Well
Fact
Enough
Facts
Many
Found
Perplexing
Even
Reality
Mystic
Never
Thought
Thinker
Time
Truth
Philosopher
Think
Find
Gets
Thinking
Wells
Though

More quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

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My advanced age has taught me the resignation of being 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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So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
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The European and the North American consider that a book that has been awarded any kind of prize must be good the Argentine allows for the possibility that the book might not be bad, despite the prize.
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I suppose every poet has his own private mythology. Maybe he's unaware of it. People tell me that I have evolved a private mythology of tigers, of blades, of labyrinths, and Im unaware of the fact this is so. My readers are finding it all the time. But I think perhaps that is the duty of poet.
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Perhaps the apparent favor of the universe is no more than the crocodile grin of a Doberman breathing hard and about to be hungry?
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A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words—or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols—spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word.
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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If I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father's library.
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
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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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i walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive
Jorge Luis Borges
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I have preferred to teach my students not English literature but my love for certain authors, or, even better, certain pages, or even better than that, certain lines. One falls in love with a line, then with a page, then with an author. Well, why not? It is a beautiful process.
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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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.
Jorge Luis Borges
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The two important facts I should say, are emotion, and then words arising from emotion. I don't think you can write in an emotionless way. If you attempt it, the result is artificial. I don't like that kind of writing. I think that if a poem is really great, you should think of it as having written itself despite the author. It should flow.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Doubt is one of the names of intelligence.
Jorge Luis Borges
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I would define the baroque as that style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities, and that borders on self-caricature. The baroque is the final stage in all art, when art flaunts and squanders its resources.
Jorge Luis Borges
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May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Your unforgivable sins do not allow you to see my splendor.
Jorge Luis Borges