Jorge Luis Borges Quotes

Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.

Jorge Luis Borges

On the floor, and hanging on to the bar, squatted an old man, immobile as an object. His years had reduced and polished him as water does a stone or the generations of men do a sentence. He was dark, dried up , diminutive, and seemed outside time, situated in eternity.

Jorge Luis Borges

Like every writer, he measured the virtues of other writers by their performance, and asked that they measure him by what he conjectured or planned.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

That history should have imitated history was already sufficiently marvellous; that history should imitate literature is inconceivable....

Jorge Luis Borges

The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things.

Jorge Luis Borges

In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?

Jorge Luis Borges

I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths.

Jorge Luis Borges

A labyrinth of symbols... An invisible labyrinth of time.

Jorge Luis Borges

I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets.

Jorge Luis Borges

I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.

Jorge Luis Borges

I have known that thing the Greeks knew not uncertainty.

Jorge Luis Borges

Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case.

Jorge Luis Borges

My undertaking is not difficult, essentially... I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.

Jorge Luis Borges

The geometry of Tln comprises two somewhat different disciplines: the visual and the tactile. The latter corresponds to our own geometry and is subordinated to the first.

Jorge Luis Borges

In life, he suffered from a sense of unreality, as do many Englishmen.

Jorge Luis Borges