Jorge Luis Borges Quotes

There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once.

In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

Tu ausencia me rodea
como la cuerda a la garganta,
el mar al que se hunde.

I tried mescaline and cocaine in my youth, but I immediately switched to mint candy, which was more stimulating. I am not interested in drugs if they produce the same effects as alcohol. A drunkard is evidently ridiculous. I have been drunk some times, and I remember them as horrible experiences for me and everyone else.

The event took place in the month of February of 1969, to the north of Boston, in Cambridge. I didn't write it down right away because my first intention was to forget it, so as not to lose my mind.

Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.

Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.

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

You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?

Being conservative is a way of being skeptic.

He transforms all concepts into incommunicable, solidified objects. To refute him is to become contaminated with unreality.

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.

Mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of men.

There are people who barely feel poetry, and they are generally dedicated to teaching it.

The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.