Jorge Luis Borges citáty

strana 3

„Ráj jsem si vždy představoval jako knihovnu, nikdy jako zahradu.“

„V životě je zapotřebí vášně.“

„Vina trvá potud, pokud trvá lítost.“

„Dvacet let jsem na fakultě humanitních věd univerzity v Buenos Aires vyučoval anglickou literaturu. Svým studentům jsem vždycky radil, aby místo kritik a pojednání o knihách četli přímo knihy samotné; možná jim budou méně rozumět, ale budou mít požitek z toho, že slyší něčí hlas.“

„Bůh stvořil noci složené
ze snů a lesklých zrcadel,
to aby člověk pochopil,
že je jen odrazem. Proto nás tolik děsí?“

„Občas se stane, že jakási tvář
prohlíží si nás z hlubiny zrcadla;
i umění by mělo být jako to zrcadlo
a ukazovat nám naši tvář.“

„Moje znalost malajské či maďarské literatury je nulová, jsem si však jist, že kdyby mi čas poskytl možnost studovat je, nalezl bych v nich veškerou potravu, kterou si duše žádá.“

“I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.”

“When you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.”

“There are those who seek the love of a woman to forget her, to not think about her.”

“Man's memory shapes
Its own Eden within”

“What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?”

“Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety.”

“We accept reality so readily - perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.”

“I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets.”

“The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.”

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

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

“I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government.”

“A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Paradise will be a kind of library”

“Fame is a form, perhaps the worst form, of incomprehension.”

“It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.”

“From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me.”

“The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men.”

“We have shared out, like thieves, the amazing treasures of days and 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.”

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

“It only takes two facing mirrors to build a labyrinth.”

“The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all of these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy.”

“To think, analyze and invent are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence.”