Jorge Luis Borges

“It only takes two facing mirrors to build a labyrinth.”

“If I could live again - I will travel light,If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feetat the beginning of spring tillthe end of autumn,I'll ride more carts,I'll watch more sunrises...”

“Eğer, yeniden başlayabilseydim yaşamaya,İkincisinde, daha çok hata yapardım.Kusursuz olmaya çalışmaz, sırtüstü yatardım.Neşeli olurdum, ilkinde olmadığım kadar,Çok az şeyiCiddiyetle yapardım.Temizlik sorun bile olmazdı asla.Daha çok riske girerdim.Seyahat ederdim daha fazla.Daha çok güneş doğuşu izler,Daha çok dağa tırmanır, daha çok nehirde yüzerdim.Görmediğim bir çok yere giderdim.Dondurma yerdim doyasıya ve daha az bezelye.Gerçek sorunlarım olurdu hayali olanların yerine.Yaşamın her anını gerçek ve verimli kılan insanlardandım ben.Yeniden başlayabilseydim eğer, yalnız mutlu anlarım olurdu.Farkında mısınız bilmem. Yaşam budur zaten.Anlar, sadece anlar. Siz de anı yaşayın.Hiçbir yere yanında termometre, su, şemsiye ve paraşüt almadan,Gitmeyen insanlardandım ben.Yeniden başlayabilseydim eğer, hiçbir şey taşımazdım.Eğer yeniden başlayabilseydim,İlkbaharda pabuçlarımı fırlatır atardım.Ve sonbahar bitene kadar yürürdüm çıplak ayaklarla.Bilinmeyen yollar keşfeder, güneşin tadına varır,Çocuklarla oynardım, bir şansım olsaydı eğer.Ama işte 85'indeyim ve biliyorum…Ölüyorum…”

“La duda es uno de los nombres de la inteligencia.”

“Bana aynı anda hem 800,000 kitabı hem de karanlığı veren Tanrı'nın muhteşem ironisi”

“‎... que mientras dromimos aqui, estamos despiertos en otro lado y que asi cada hombre es de dos hombres.”

“Hay quienes no pueden imaginar un mundo sin pájaros; hay quienes no pueden imaginar un mundo sin agua; en lo que a mi se refiere, soy incapaz de imaginar un mundo sin libros.There are those who cannot imagine a world without birds; there are those who cannot imagine a world without water; but in my case I am unable to imagine a world without books.”

“All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare”

“One of the schools of Tlön goes so far as to negate time; it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than as a present hope, that the past has no reality other than as a present memory. Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified an mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process. Another, that the history of the universe — and in it our lives and the most tenuous detail of our lives — is the scripture produced by a subordinate god in order to communicate with a demon. Another, that the universe is comparable to those cryptographs in which not all the symbols are valid and that only what happens every three hundred nights is true. Another, that while we sleep here, we are awake elsewhere and that in this way every man is two men.”

“Toda ficción es una impostura; lo que importa es sentir que ha sido soñada sinceramente.”

“I, that used to figure ParadiseIn the guise of a library”

“Before unearthing this letter, I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite. I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular one. A book whose last page was identical with the first, a book which had the possibility of continuing indefinitely.”

“APRENDIENDODespués de un tiempo, uno aprende la sutil diferencia entre sostener una mano y encadenar un alma, y uno aprende que el amor no significa acostarse y una compañía no significa seguridad, y uno empieza a aprender...Que los besos no son contratos y los regalos no son promesas, y uno empieza a aceptar sus derrotas con la cabeza alta y los ojos abiertos, y uno aprende a construir todos sus caminos en el hoy, porque el terreno de mañana es demasiado inseguro para planes...y los futuros tienen una forma de caerse en la mitad. Y después de un tiempo uno aprende que si es demasiado, hasta el calor del sol quema. Así que uno planta su propio jardín y decora su propia alma, en lugar de esperar a que alguien le traiga flores. Y uno aprende que realmente puede aguantar, que uno realmente es fuerte, que uno realmente vale, y uno aprende y aprende... y con cada día uno aprende. Con el tiempo aprendes que estar con alguien porque te ofrece un buen futuro, significa que tarde o temprano querrás volver a tu pasado. Con el tiempo comprendes que sólo quien es capaz de amarte con tus defectos, sin pretender cambiarte, puede brindarte toda la felicidad que deseas. Con el tiempo te das cuenta de que si estás al lado de esa persona sólo por acompañar tu soledad, irremediablemente acabarás no deseando volver a verla. Con el tiempo entiendes que los verdaderos amigos son contados, y que el que no lucha por ellos tarde o temprano se verá rodeado sólo de amistades falsas.Con el tiempo aprendes que las palabras dichas en un momento de ira pueden seguir lastimando a quien heriste, durante toda la vida. Con el tiempo aprendes que disculpar cualquiera lo hace, pero perdonar es sólo de almas grandes. Con el tiempo comprendes que si has herido a un amigo duramente, muy probablemente la amistad jamás volverá a ser igual. Con el tiempo te das cuenta que aunque seas feliz con tus amigos, algún día llorarás por aquellos! que dejaste ir. Con el tiempo te das cuenta de que cada experiencia vivida con cada persona es irrepetible.Con el tiempo te das cuenta de que el que humilla o desprecia a un ser humano, tarde o temprano sufrirá las mismas humillaciones o desprecios multiplicados al cuadrado. Con el tiempo aprendes a construir todos tus caminos en el hoy, porque el terreno del mañana es demasiado incierto para hacer planes. Con el tiempo comprendes que apresurar las cosas o forzarlas a que pasen ocasionará que al final no sean como esperabas. Con el tiempo te das cuenta de que en realidad lo mejor no era el futuro, sino el momento que estabas viviendo justo en ese instante.Con el tiempo verás que aunque seas feliz con los que están a tu lado,añorarás terriblemente a los que ayer estaban contigo y ahora se han marchado. Con el tiempo aprenderás que intentar perdonar o pedir perdón, decir que amas, decir que extrañas, decir que necesitas, decir que quieres ser amigo, ante una tumba, ya no tiene ningún sentido. Pero desafortunadamente, solo con el tiempo...”

“At my age, one should be aware of one's limits, and this knowledge may make for happiness. When I was young, I thought of literature as a game of skillful and surprising variations; now that I have found my own voice, I feel that tinkering and tampering neither greatly improve nor greatly spoil my drafts. This, of course, is a sin against one of the main tendencies of letters in this century--the vanity of overwriting-- ... I suppose my best work is over. This gives me a certain quiet satisfaction and ease. And yet I do not feel I have written myself out. In a way, youthfulness seems closer to me today than when I was a young man. I no longer regard happiness as unattainable; once, long ago, I did. Now I know that it may occur at any moment but that it should never be sought after. As to failure or fame, they are quite irrelevant and I never bother about them. What I'm out for now is peace, the enjoyment of thinking and of friendship, and, though it may be too ambitious, a sense of loving and of being loved.”

“Funes discernía continuamente los tranquilos avances de la corrupción, de las caries, de la fatiga. Notaba los progresos de la muerte, de la humedad. Era el solitario y lúcido espectador de un mundo multiforme, instantáneo y casi intolerablemente preciso. Babilonia, Londres y Nueva York han abrumado con feroz esplendor la imaginación de los hombres; nadie, en sus torres populosas o en sus avenidas urgentes, ha sentido el calor y la presión de una realidad tan infatigable como la que día y noche convergía sobre el infeliz Ireneo, en su pobre arrabal sudamericano. Le era muy difícil dormir. Dormir es distraerse del mundo; Funes, de espaldas en el catre, en la sombra, se figuraba cada grieta y cada moldura de las casas precisas que lo rodeaban. (Repito que el menos importante de sus recuerdos era más minucioso y más vivo que nuestra percepción de un goce físico o de un tormento físico.) Hacia el Este, en un trecho no amanzanado, había casas nuevas, desconocidas. Funes las imaginaba negras, compactas, hechas de tiniebla homogénea; en esa dirección volvía la cara para dormir. También solía imaginarse en el fondo del río, mecido y anulado por la corriente.”

“A necessary monster.”

“The metaphysicians of Tlön are not looking for truth, nor even for an approximation of it; they are after a kind of amazement.”

“A miracle has the right to impose conditions.”

“Crees que la Caída es otra cosa que ignorar que estamos en el Paraíso?”

“Según la doctrina idealista, los verbos vivir y soñar son rigurosamente sinónimos.”

“Existe un río cuyas aguas dan la inmortalidad; en alguna región habrá otro río cuyas aguas la borren. El número no es infinito; un viajero inmortal que recorra el mundo acabará, algún día, por haber bebido de todos.”

“Distance and antiquity (the emphases of space and time) pull on our hearts. If we are already sobered by the thought that men lived two thousand five hundred years ago, how could we not be moved to know that they made verses, were spectators of the world, that they sheltered in light, lasting words something of their ponderous, fleeting life, words that fulfill a long destiny?”

“What will my redeemer be like? I wonder. Will he be a bull or a man? Will he perhaps be a bull with the face of a man? Or will he be like me?”

“But let no one imagine that we were mere ascetics. There is no more complex pleasure than thought, and it was to thought that we delivered ourselves over.”

“Quain solía argumentar que los lectores eran una especie ya extinta. 'No hay europeo' (razonaba) 'que no sea un escritor, en potencia o en acto.'" Examen de la obra de Herbert Quain”

“Mi empresa no es difícil, esencialmente. Me bastaría ser inmortal para llevarla a cabo." Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote”

“...medité en ese laberinto perdido: lo imaginé inviolado y perfecto en la cumbre secreta de una montaña, lo imaginé borrado por arrozales o debajo del agua, lo imaginé infinito, no ya de quioscos ochavados y de sendas que vuelven, sino de ríos y provincias y reinos... Pensé en un laberinto de laberintos, en un sinuoso laberinto creciente que abarca el pasado y el porvenir y que implicara de algún modo a los astros.”

“A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words—or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols—spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word.”

“Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies — for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry — I say to myself, “What a pity I can’t buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.”

“De los diversos instrumentos del hombre, el más asombroso es, sin duda, el libro. Los demás son extensiones de su cuerpo. El microscopio, el telescopio, son extensiones de su vista; el teléfono es extensión de la voz; luego tenemos el arado y la espada, extensiones de su brazo. Pero el libro es otra cosa: el libro es una extensión de la memoria y de la imaginaciónOf all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination.”

“It must be that I am not made to be a dead man, but these places and this discussion seem like a dream, and not a dream dreamed by me but by someone else still to be born.”

“El hijo viejo, el hombre sin historia,El huérfano que pudo ser el muerto,Agota en vano el caserón desierto.(Fue de los dos y es hoy de la memoria.Es de los dos.) Bajo la dura suerteBusca perdido el hombre dolorosoLa voz que fue su voz. Lo milagrosoNo sería más raro que la muerte.Lo acosarán interminablementeLos recuerdos sagrados y trivialesQue son nuestro destino, esas mortalesMemorias vastas como un continente.Dios o Tal Vez o Nadie, yo te pidoSu inagotable imagen, no el olvido.”

“Ölümü sabırsızlıkla bekleyerek ama hiç sızlanmadan öldü.”

“Gerçekte, uykudan uyanıp da kendi kendisiyle karşılaşmayan insan yoktur.”

“I remember him with a dark passionflower in his hand, looking at it as no one has ever looked at such a flower, though they might look from the twilight of day until the twilight of night, for a whole life long.”

“The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate. I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship. I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone, and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.I do not know which of us has written this page.”

“One day or one night—between my days and nights, what difference can there be?—I dreamed that there was a grain of sand on the floor of my cell. Unconcerned, I went back to sleep; I dreamed that I woke up and there were two grains of sand. Again I slept; I dreamed that now there were three. Thus the grains of sand multiplied, little by little, until they filled the cell and I was dying beneath that hemisphere of sand. I realized that I was dreaming; with a vast effort I woke myself. But waking up was useless—I was suffocated by the countless sand. Someone said to me:You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of the grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.I felt lost. The sand crushed my mouth, but I cried out: I cannot be killed by sand that I dream —nor is there any such thing as a dream within a dream.— Jorge Luis Borges, The Writing of the God”

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

“I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so.”

“And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; and now that I have unlimited power, I am going to cause a tiger. - Dreamtigers”

“When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future. Thousands of the greedy abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed up the stairways, urged on by the vain intention of finding their Vindication. These pilgrims disputed in the narrow corridors, proffered dark curses, strangled each other on the divine stairways, flung the deceptive books into the air shafts, met their death cast down in a similar fashion by the inhabitants of remote regions. Others went mad ... The Vindications exist (I have seen two which refer to persons of the future, to persons who are perhaps not imaginary) but the searchers did not remember that the possibility of a man's finding his Vindication, or some treacherous variation thereof, can be computed as zero.”

“If I could live again my life,In the next – I’ll try,- to make more mistakes,I won’t try to be so perfect,I’ll be more relaxed,I’ll be more full – than I am now,In fact, I’ll take fewer things seriously,I’ll be less hygienic,I’ll take more risks,I’ll take more trips,I’ll watch more sunsets,I’ll climb more mountains,I’ll swim more rivers,I’ll go to more places – I’ve never been,I’ll eat more ice creams and less lima beans,I’ll have more real problems – and less imaginary ones,I was one of those people who liveprudent and prolific lives -each minute of his life,Of course that I had moments of joy – but,if I could go back I’ll try to have only good moments,If you don’t know – that’s what life is made of,Don’t lose the now!I was one of those who never goes anywherewithout a thermometer,without a hot-water bottle,and without an umbrella and without a parachute,If I could live again – I will travel light,If I could live again – I’ll try to work bare feetat the beginning of spring till the end of autumn,I’ll ride more carts,I’ll watch more sunrises and play with more children,If I have the life to live – but now I am 85,- and I know that I am dying …”

“Ah,' said the journalist, 'so the entire thing is your own invention. I thought it was true because you gave the name of the street.' I did not dare tell him that the naming of streets is not much of a feat.”

“Years later, Taylor was inspecting the jails of the kingdom; and in the one at Nittur the ceiling had been covered, in barbaric colours, which time was subtilizing before erasing them, by a Muslim fakir's elaboration of a kind of infinite Tiger. This Tiger was composed of many tigers in the most vertiginous fashion : it was traversed by tigers, scored by tigers and it contained seas and Himalayas and armies which seemed to reveal still other tigers. The painter had died many years ago in this very cell; he had come from Sind, or maybe Guzerat, and his original purpose had been to design a map of the world. Indeed, some traces of this were yet to be discerned in the monstrous image....”

“Reading . . . is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.”

“SomeoneA man worn down by time,a man who does not even expect death(the proofs of death are statisticsand everyone runs the riskof being the first immortal),a man who has learned to express thanksfor the days' modest alms:sleep, routine, the taste of water,an unsuspected etymology,a Latin or Saxon verse,the memory of a woman who left himthirty years ago nowwhom he can call to mind without bitterness,a man who is aware that the presentis both future and oblivion,a man who has betrayedand has been betrayed,may feel suddenly, when crossing the street,a mysterious happinessnot coming from the side of hopebut from an ancient innocence,from his own root or from some diffuse god.He knows better than to look at it closely,for there are reasons more terrible than tigerswhich will prove to himthat wretchedness is his duty,but he accepts humblythis felicity, this glimmer.Perhaps in death when the dustis dust, we will be foreverthis undecipherable root,from which will grow forever,serene or horrible,or solitary heaven or hell.”

“I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as ‘The Masses’. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time.”

“¿Existe ese Aleph en lo íntimo de una piedra? ¿Lo he visto cuando vi todas las cosas y lo he olvidado? Nuestra mente es porosa para el olvido; yo mismo estoy falseando y perdiendo, bajo la trágica erosión de los años, los rasgos de Beatriz”

“Años de soledad le habían enseñado que los días, en la memoria, tienden a ser iguales, pero que no hay un día, ni siquiera de cárcel o de hospital, que no traiga sorpresas”

“La creencia en ell Zahir es islámica...Zahir en árabe, quiere decir notorio, visible; en tal sentido, es uno de los noventa y nueve nombres de Dios; la plebe, en tierras musulmanas, lo dice de "los seres o cosas que tienen la terrible virtud de ser inolvidables y cuya imagen acaba por enloquecer a la gente”