Noreen Khan > Noreen's Quotes

“Half the night I waste in sighs,
Half in dreams I sorrow after
The delight of early skies;
In a wakeful dose I sorrow
For the hand, the lips, the eyes,
For the meeting of the morrow,
The delight of happy laughter,
The delight of low replies.”
― Alfred Tennyson, Maud, and other poems

“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 live
prudent 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 anywhere
without 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 feet
at 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 …”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Paradise will be a kind of library”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Loneliness does not worry me; life is difficult enough, putting up with yourself and with your own habits.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“To think, analyze and invent are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones

“Fame is a form - perhaps the worst form - of incomprehension.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Fictions/Ficciones

“It only takes two facing mirrors to build a labyrinth.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“A writer, or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an instrument; everything has been given for an end. This is even stronger in the case of the artist. Everything that happens, including humiliations, embarrassments, misfortunes, all has been given like clay, like material for one’s art. One must accept it. For this reason 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.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Non-Fictions

“The Suicide

Not a single star will be left in the night.
The night will not be left.
I will die and, with me,
the weight of the intolerable universe.
I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions,
the continents and faces.
I shall erase the accumulated past.
I shall make dust of history, dust of dust.
Now I am looking on the final sunset.
I am hearing the last bird.
I bequeath nothingness to no one.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Poems

“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.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph and Other Stories

“I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me...”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph and Other Stories

“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.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Dreamtigers

“There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music.”
― Borges, Jorge Luis

“There is an hour of the afternoon when the plain is on the verge of saying something. It never says, or perhaps it says it infinitely, or perhaps we do not understand it, or we understand it and it is untranslatable as music.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Brodie's Report

“Boast of Quietness

Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than meteors.
The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.
Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious and would like to
understand them.
Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.
Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.
They speak of humanity.
My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of that same poverty.
They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword,
the willow grove's visible prayer as evening falls.
Time is living me.
More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.
They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.
My name is someone and anyone.
I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text; he should change it into something else.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“It means much to have loved, to have been happy, to have laid my hand on the living Garden, even for a day.”
― Luis Borges

“i walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive.”
― Jorge Luis Borges