Quotes From "Labyrinths: Selected Stories And Other Writings" By Jorge Luis Borges

Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. For that reason, it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save it. Jorge Luis Borges

And yet, and yet… Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical universe, are apparent desperations and secret consolations. Our destiny … is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and iron-clad. Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges. Jorge Luis Borges

Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened. Jorge Luis Borges

Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality. Jorge Luis Borges

One of the schools of Tl̦n 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 Рand in it our lives and the most tenuous detail of our lives Рis 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. Jorge Luis Borges

I cannot lament the loss of a love or a friendship without meditating that one loses only what one really never had. Jorge Luis Borges

I do not know which of us has written this page. Jorge Luis Borges

All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare Jorge Luis Borges