A writer, or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an instrument; everything has been given for an end.… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Chang Tzu tells us of a persevering man who after three laborious years mastered the art of dragon-slaying. For the rest of… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“Azevedo Bandeira is an expert in the art of progressive intimidation, in the satanic maneuver of gradually humiliating his interlocutor by combining… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“In art nothing is more secondary than the author's intentions.” — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“I reread these negative remarks and realize that I do not know whether music can despair of music or marble of marble.… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Mir Bahadur Ali is, as we have seen, incapable of evading the most vulgar of art's temptations: that of being a genius. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Lully's machine, Mill's fear and Lasswitz's chaotic library can be the subject of jokes, but they exaggerate a propensity which is common:… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
To arrange a library is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay,… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
God must not engage in theology. The writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Art is very mysterious. I wonder if you can really do any damage to art. I think that when we're writing, something… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
I would define the baroque as that style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities, and that borders on… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
The art of writing is mysterious, the opinions we hold are ephemeral.... — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all these things into symbols, into music,… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Two aesthetics exist: the passive aesthetic of mirrors and the active aesthetic of prisms. Guided by the former, art turns into a… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all of these things into symbols, into… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Loneliness does not worry me; life is difficult enough, putting up with yourself and with your own habits. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
I don't think we're capable of knowledge, but I like to keep an open mind. So if you ask me whether I believe in… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
The web of time - the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect, or ignore each other through the centuries - embraces "every"… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
When I write, I do it urged by an intimate necessity. I don't have in mind an exclusive public, or a public of multitudes,… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
