Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) was an Argentinian author, poet and short story writer. He is known for fantasy elements in his works. His first book of poems was Fervor de Buenos Aires. It was followed by numerous collections of poetry and short stories. He became director of the National Library (1955) after going blind. His one of the most famous works is Labyrinths. He had enormous impact on world literature as well as Latin American literature.Wisdom & Quotes
- To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.
- To arrange a liberty is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism.
- You may win your heart's desire, but in the end you're cheated of it by death.
- To bless thine enemy is a good way to satisfy the vanity.
- What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.
- The serene decision of the tombs is beautiful,
And the little squares with the coolness of a patio
And the isolation and eternal individuation;
Each contemplated his own death,
Unique and personal like a memory.
The quietude pleases us,
We confuse such peace in life with dying
And while we believe we desire not to be
We are praying for a peaceful life.
- La Recoleta
- There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.
- Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.
- Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces and image of his own face.
- Reality is not always probable, or likely.
- That is what always happens: we never know whether we are victors or whether we are defeated.
- A writer needs loneliness, and he gets his share of it. He needs love, and he gets shared and also unshared love. In fact, he needs the universe. To be a writer is, in a sense, to be a daydreamer - to be living a kind of double life.
- Reality favours symmetry.
- A writer should have another lifetime to see whether he is appreciated.
- I, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man, myself alone. From out of a whirlwind the voice of God replied: I am not, either. I dreamed the world the way you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare: one of the forms of my dream was you, who, like me, are many and one.
- Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment - the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
- Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; It is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.
- If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his reader to believe it.
- What a writer wants to do is not what he does.
- Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.
Kawabata Yasunari