20 Fantastic Phrases By Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges has left us many wonderful phrases and passages in his extensive oeuvre. This Argentine writer leaves us baffled even now and will of course continue to do so, because he is timeless.
He was a lover of the story, but not so much the novel: “He didn’t like [the novel]. He would say that cups of tea, ladies’ hats and other things would suddenly appear to fill the space. The story, on the other hand, is made for suspense, like an arrow pointed at the target.”
Borges was never tied to what was popular at the time. What he valued could not be awarded with a Nobel Prize in Literature. Still, in the eyes of many, he certainly deserved it. On one occasion, a reporter asked him, “Why do you think you didn’t get the Nobel Prize in Literature?” He replied, “Swedish wisdom.” On another occasion, he said, “I will always be the future Nobel laureate. It is certainly a Scandinavian tradition.”
Today we want to remember his grandeur by giving you twenty brilliant sentences that reflect the depth, feeling and mastery of Borges’ craft.
1 – I speak not of vengeance, nor of forgiveness; forgetting is the only revenge and the only forgiveness.
2 – I have committed the worst sin a man can commit. I haven’t been happy.
3 – Some defeats have more dignity than victory.
4 – Of all the instruments of man, the most astonishing is, without a doubt, the book. All the others are extensions of the body. The microscope and the telescope are extensions of our vision; the telephone is an extension of our voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of our arms. But the book is something else: the book is an extension of our memory and imagination.
5 – Every destiny, no matter how long or complicated, consists of the reality of a single moment; the moment when a man knows who he is forever.
6 – One grows up by what he reads, not by what he writes.
7 – One is in love when one realizes that the other is one of a kind.
8 – That which is past is all we really possess.
9 – I suspect that happiness is the only thing that is free from mystery, because it justifies itself entirely by itself.
10 – Perhaps a man in love is never wrong. Perhaps those who are not in love are the ones who are wrong.
11 – I believe that in time we will earn it not to have a government.
12 – I have always felt that there is something about Buenos Aires that I like. I really like that I don’t like what other people like.
13 – There is no greater comfort than the thought that we have chosen our own misfortunes.
14 – At first the distances were greater, because space was measured in time.
15 – I have always imagined that Paradise would be a kind of library.
16 – I am alone and there is no one in the mirror.
17 – You are not ambitious; you are content with being happy.
18 – I believe that a game should be invented in which no one wins.
19 – The burden of the past is infinite.
20 – Blindness is a form of loneliness.
If you’d like to learn more about Borges, watch the following documentary about his life and work.
His passion for the short story has provided us with masterpieces in a genre that most of us leave behind as we grow up. Here is a list of his most famous stories:
- The Alepha
- The Secret Miracle
- The Circular Ruins
- Ulrike
- Funes the Memorious
- The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths
- The House of Asterion
- Doctor Brodie’s Report
- The South
- Man on Pink Corner
