The Total Library Quotes

“In 1883, an earthquake that lasted ninety seconds shook the south of Italy. In that earthquake, he lost his parents and his sister; he himself was buried by rubble. Two or three hours later, he was rescued. To ward off total despair, he resolved to think about the Universe - a general procedure among the unfortunate, and sometimes a balm.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986

“To fall in love is to create a religion with a fallible god.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986

“happiness does not need to be transformed: happiness is its own end.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986

“Every one of us is, in some way, all the people who have died before us. And not only those of our blood.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986

“Immortality is in the memory of others and in the work we leave behind. What does it matter if that work is forgotten?”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986

“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.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986

“We may believe that Homer never existed, but that the Greeks imagined him as blind in order to insist on the fact that poetry is, above all, music; that poetry is, above all, the lyre; that the visual can or cannot exist in a poet.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986

“a book of genius is a book that can be read in a slightly or very different way by each generation.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986

“I do not want us to rest on our laurels; I hope our art can forget, and plunge into untouched seas, as adventurous night leaps from the beaches of day.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986