Sean O’Casey
Irish writer (1880-1964)
Jorge Luis Borges was an acclaimed Argentine writer known for his innovative short stories and essays exploring themes like dreams, infinity, and mythology. He became an internationally renowned figure in the 20th century and influenced the magic realist movement in Latin American literature.
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About the Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedowas an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known works, Ficcionesand El Aleph (transl. The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring motifs such as dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges’s works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have had a major influence on the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.
Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the College de Geneve. The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages.
In 1961, Borges came to international attention when he received the first Formentor Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971, he won the Jerusalem Prize. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the growing number of English translations, the Latin American Boom, and by the success of Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: “He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish-American novelists.” David Foster Wallace wrote: “The truth, briefly stated, is that Borges is arguably the great bridge between modernism and post-modernism in world literature. He is modernist in that his fiction shows a first-rate human mind stripped of all foundations of religious or ideological certainty – a mind turned wholly inward on itself. His stories are inbent and hermetic, with the oblique terror of a game whose rules are unknown and its stakes everything.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet, and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. He is best known for his collections of short stories, Ficciones and El Aleph, published in the 1940s.
Borges’ best-known works were the short story collections Ficciones and El Aleph, published in the 1940s. These stories explored themes such as dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers, and mythology.
Borges became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through his imagination.
In 1961, Borges received the first Formentor Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971, he won the Jerusalem Prize, further cementing his international reputation.
Borges’ works have been credited with contributing to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, as well as having a major influence on the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.
Borges himself was fluent in several languages, which allowed his work to be widely translated and published in the United States and Europe.
Jorge Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family also travelled widely in Europe, including Spain.
31 Quotes by Jorge Luis Borges
- 1.
Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 2.
My undertaking is not difficult, essentially. I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 3.
In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 4.
Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 5.
Life and death have been lacking in my life.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 6.
One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 7.
The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 8.
Reading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 9.
I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 10.
The central problem of novel-writing is causality.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 11.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 12.
The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 13.
I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 14.
Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 15.
To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 16.
Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 17.
Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 18.
In general, every country has the language it deserves.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 19.
Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 20.
To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 21.
The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify the future.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 22.
Democracy is an abuse of statistics.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 23.
The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 24.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 25.
There is a concept that is the corrupter and destroyer of all others. I speak not of Evil, whose limited empire is that of ethics; I speak of the infinite.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 26.
Life itself is a quotation.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 27.
Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 28.
The original is unfaithful to the translation.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 29.
To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 30.
Reality is not always probable, or likely.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)
- 31.
I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.
Jorge Luis BorgesArgentine writer, essayist, poet and translator (1899-1986)