Jorge Luis Borges citáty

page 4

„Priateľstvo dvoch mužov je luxus, dvoch žien zázrak.“

„Čítanie je rozmýšľanie s cudzím mozgom.“

„Človek je zaľúbený, keď si uvedomí, že tá druhá osoba je jedinečná.“

„Medzi dvoma mužmi je luxus, medzi dvoma ženami zázrak.“

„Naozajstná smrť príde vtedy, keď sa zatvoria posledné oči, ktoré videli našu tvár.“

„Nie som si istý, či skutočne existujem. Som všetkými spisovateľmi, ktorých som čítal, všetkými ľudmi, ktorých som stretol, všetkými ženami, ktoré som miloval; všetkými mestami, ktoré som navštívil, všetkými moji predkami.“

“Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.”

“We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe.”

“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.”

“I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me…”

“He consorted with prostitutes and poets… and with persons even worse.”

“The years go by, and I've told the story so many times that I'm not sure anymore whether I actually remember it or whether I just remember the words I tell it with.”

“Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.”

“With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another.”

“I reflected that everything happens to a man precisely, precisely now. Centuries of centuries and only in the present do things happen; countless men in the air, on the face of the earth and the sea, and all that really is happening is happening to me...”

“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.”

“It's a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA.”

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be some kind of library.”

“Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.”

“Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process.”

“God must not engage in theology. The writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us.”

“It also occurred to him that throughout history, humankind has told two stories: the story of a lost ship sailing the Mediterranean seas in quest of a beloved isle, and the story of a god who allows himself to be crucified on Golgotha.”

“When I wake up, I wake to something worse. It’s the astonishment of being myself”

“In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.”

“For one of those gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it.”

“I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out post cards... I saw the oblique shadow of some ferns on the floor of a hot-house; I saw tigers, emboli, bison, ground swells and armies; I saw all the ants in the world.”

“Villari took no notice of them because the idea of a coincidence between art and reality was alien to him. Unlike people who read novels, he never saw himself as a character in a work of art.”

“It is known that Whistler when asked how long it took him to paint one of his "nocturnes" answered: "All of my life." With the same rigor he could have said that all of the centuries that preceded the moment when he painted were necessary. From that correct application of the law of causality it follows that the slightest event presupposes the inconceivable universe and, conversely, that the universe needs even the slightest of events.”

“The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.”

“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.”

“Do you want to see what human eyes have never seen? Look at the moon. Do you want to hear what ears have never heard? Listen to the bird's cry. Do you want to touch what hands have never touched? Touch the earth. Verily I say that God is about to create the world.”

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

“His many years had reduced and polished him the way water smooths and polishes a stone or generations of men polish a proverb.”

“It is no exaggeration to state that the classic culture of Tlön comprises only one discipline: psychology. All others are subordinated to it. I have said that the men of this planet conceive the universe as a series of mental processes which do not develop in space but successively in time.”

“How else can one threaten, other than with death? The interesting, the original thing, would be to threaten someone with immortality.”