The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory Quotes

“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.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“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.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand & Shakespeare's Memory

“A miracle has the right to impose conditions.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“To see a thing one has to comprehend it. An armchair presupposes the human body, its joints and limbs; a pair of scissors, the act of cutting. What can be said of a lamp or a car? The savage cannot comprehend the missionary’s Bible; the passenger does not see the same rigging as the sailors. If we really saw the world, maybe we would understand it.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“ما نقوله لا يُشبهنا بالضرورة .”
― خورخي لويس بورخيس, كتاب الرمل

“zaman beni sürükleyen bir nehir, ama nehir benim;
beni parçalayan bir kaplan, ama kaplan benim;
beni tüketen bir ateş, ama ateş benim;
evren, ne yazık ki gerçek;
ben, ne yazık ki, borges'im”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“تعودت أن أقبل هذا القبح،كما يقبل المرء بهذه الأشياء المتنافرة التي نسميها العالم لمجرد أنها توجد معا”
― خورخي لويس بورخيس, كتاب الرمل

“يوجد بيت ل"فرلين"، لن أذكره ثانية
شارع قريب، لن تعبره خطواتي للأبد
مرآة رأتني، مرة واحدة وأخيرة
وسط الكتب في مكتبتي، يوجد بعضها لن أفتحها مرة ثانية أبدا
هذا الصيف، أكملت الخمسين: الموت يخضعني علي الدوام”
― خورخي لويس بورخيس, كتاب الرمل

“إذا كان هذا الصباح وهذا اللقاء حلمين، فعلى كلينا أن يظن أنه الحالم.وربما توقفنا عن الحلم،وربما واصلناه. وواجبناالجلي، في الوقت نفسه،هو أن نقبل بالحلم تماماًكما نقبل وبأننا نولد ونرى ونتنفس "
قال الآخر بجزع: وإذا استمر الحلم ؟”
― خورخي لويس بورخيس, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“El hombre olvida que es un muerto que conversa con muertos.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“I felt what we always feel when someone dies–the sad awareness, now futile, of how little it would have cost us to have been more loving. One forgets that one is a dead man conversing with dead men.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“There is nothing but quotations left for us. Our language is a system of quotations.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“La ceguera gradual no es cosa trágica. Es como un lento atardecer de verano.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“اذا كان التعلم هو التذكر ، فإن الجهل لا يمكن أن يكون شيئا سوي النسيان .”
― خورخي لويس بورخيس, كتاب الرمل

“I clarified that I myself was Colombian.
"What is 'being Colombian'?"
"I'm not sure," I replied. "It's an act of faith."
"Like being Norwegian," she said, nodding.
I can recall nothing further of what was said that night.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“Je n'écris pas pour une petite élite dont je n'ai cure, ni pour cette entité platonique adulée qu'on surnomme la Masse. Je ne crois pas à ces deux abstractions, chères au démagogue. J'écris pour moi, pour mes amis et pour adoucir le cours du temps.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“Halfway through his reclusion, Arredondo experienced more than once that almost timeless time. In the first of the house’s three patios there was cistern with a frog in it. It never occurred to Arredondo to think that the frog’s time, which borders on eternity, was what he himself sought.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“As fate would have it, we talked about literature; I fear I said no more than the things I usually say to journalists. My alter ego believed in the invention, or discovery, of new metaphors; I, in those metaphors that correspond to intimate and obvious affinities and that our imagination has already accepted. Old age and sunset, dreams and life, the flow of time and water. …”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“Words are symbols that assume a shared memory. The memory I now want to set down is mine alone; all those who share it have died. The mystics invoke a rose, a kiss, a bird that is all birds, a sun that is all the stars and the sun, a jug of wine, a garden, or the sexual act. Of these metaphors, none will serve me for that long, joyous night, which left us, tired out and happy, at the borders of dawn.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“Tasalanma, yavaş yavaş artan körlük pek trajik değil. Ağır bir yaz akşamı gibi.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“El comedor y la biblioteca de mis recuerdos eran ahora, derribada la pared medianera, una sola gran pieza desmantelada, con uno que otro mueble. No trataré de describirlos, porque no estoy seguro de haberlos visto, pese a la despiadada luz blanca. Me explicaré. Para ver una cosa hay que comprenderla. El sillón presupone el cuerpo humano, sus articulaciones y partes; las tijeras, el acto de cortar. ¿Qué decir de una lámpara o de un vehículo? El salvaje no puede percibir la biblia del misionero; el pasajero no ve el mismo cordaje que los hombres de a bordo. Si viéramos realmente el universo, tal vez lo entenderíamos. "

Extracto del relato THERE ARE MORE THINGS”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“Las palabras son símbolos que postulan una memoria compartida. La que ahora quiero historiar es mía solamente; quienes la compartieron han muerto. Los místicos invocan una rosa, un beso, un pájaro que es todos los pájaros, un sol que es todas las estrellas y el sol, un cántaro de vino, un jardín o el acto sexual. De esas metáforas ninguna me sirve para esa larga noche de júbilo, que nos dejó, cansados y felices, en los linderos de la aurora. Casi no hablamos, mientras las ruedas y los cascos retumbaban sobre las piedras. (...)”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“Ölümü sabırsızlıkla bekleyerek ama hiç sızlanmadan öldü.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“Gerçekte, uykudan uyanıp da kendi kendisiyle karşılaşmayan insan yoktur.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“Gradual blindness is not a tragedy. It’s like a slow summer dusk.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“My story will be true to reality or, in any case, to my personal memory of reality, which amounts to the same thing.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“I reverently fondled the silky volumes of a certain Chinese encyclopaedia whose finely brushed characters seemed to me more mysterious than the spots on a leopard’s skin.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“I still hold two images of the ranch – the one I brought with me and the one my eyes finally saw.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“My course of study was philosophy. I remembered that it was my uncle, […] who, without invoking a single proper name, had first revealed to me philosophy’s beautiful perplexities. One of the after-dinner oranges was his aid in initiating me into Berkeley’s idealism; a chessboard was enough to illustrate the paradoxes of the Eleatics. Years later, he was to lend me Hinton’s treatises which attempt to demonstrate the reality of four-dimensional space and which the reader is meant to imagine by means of complicated exercises with mutlicoloured cubes.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory