He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.
— Dreamtigers
Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known works, the story collections Ficciones and The Aleph, published in the 1940s, explore dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology.
His work has contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre and had a major influence on the magical realist movement in 20th-century Latin American literature. Born in Buenos Aires, he moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914 and studied at the Collège de Genève. After returning to Argentina in 1921, he began publishing poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. Dreamtigers and Labyrinths are among his most quoted works in our library.
His work has contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre and had a major influence on the magical realist movement in 20th-century Latin American literature. Born in Buenos Aires, he moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914 and studied at the Collège de Genève. After returning to Argentina in 1921, he began publishing poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. Dreamtigers and Labyrinths are among his most quoted works in our library.
Most quoted works
- Dreamtigers 8
- Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings 7
- The Aleph and Other Stories 7
- Collected Fictions 6
- Ficciones 6
- Selected Non-Fictions 6
How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?
— Borges on Writing
He was very religious he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.
— The Aleph and Other Stories
I prayed aloud, less to plead for divine favor than to intimidate the tribe with articulate speech.
— The Aleph and Other Stories
Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.
— Seven Nights
Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved.
— Dreamtigers
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.
— Dreamtigers
Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened.
— Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings
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.
— Ficciones
Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.
— Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings
I'm alone and nobody is in the mirror
— Poems of the Night
I do not know which of us has written this page.
— Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings
Tearing money is an impiety, like throwing away bread.
— The Aleph and Other Stories
All things left her, all / But one. Her highborn courtlinessAccompanied her to the end, Beyond the rapture and its eclipse, In a way like an angel's. Of ElviraThe first thing that I saw - such years ago -Was her smile and also it was the last.
— Dreamtigers
We spend our lives waiting for our book and it never comes.