# Jorge Luis Borges's best quotes

Lines and verses by Borges with the book they come from: Ficciones, The Aleph, Other Inquisitions, In Praise of Darkness, The Iron Coin… Left out: the famous poem «Moments» («If I could live my life again…»), which isn't his.

- 5 votes · 11 items
- Nov 2, 2020 · Pablo B.
- https://even.best/en/l/458/jorge-luis-borges-s-best-quotes

## Top 10

1. **I, who always imagined Paradise / as a kind of library.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — «Poem of the Gifts», written after losing his sight and being made director of the National Library (1955).
2. **I have committed the worst of sins / a man can commit. I have not been / happy.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — «Remorse», in The Iron Coin (1976).
3. **Mirrors and copulation are abominable, because they increase the number of men.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — «Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius», in Ficciones (1944).
4. **Writing a poem is attempting a minor magic.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — From Los conjurados (1985), his last book of poems.
5. **Night is a long and lonely party.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — From Luna de enfrente (1925), his second book of poems.
6. **Let others boast of the pages they have written; / I am proud of those I have read.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — «A Reader», in In Praise of Darkness (1969).
7. **Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — «A New Refutation of Time», in Other Inquisitions (1952).
8. **Any life, however long and complicated, actually consists of a single moment: the moment a man knows forever who he is.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — «A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz», in The Aleph (1949).
9. **Let none think I by tear or reproach make light / of this manifesting the mastery / of God, who with excelling irony…** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — «Let none think I by tear or reproach make light / of this manifesting the mastery / of God, who with excelling irony / gives me at once both books and night.» The opening of the «Poem of the Gifts» (1960).
10. **Gradual blindness is not a tragic thing. It is like a slow summer twilight.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The lecture «Blindness», collected in Seven Nights (1980).
11. **I saw the Aleph from every point, I saw the earth in the Aleph, and in the earth the Aleph once more, and the earth…** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — «I saw the Aleph from every point, I saw the earth in the Aleph, and in the earth the Aleph once more, and the earth in the Aleph.» «The Aleph» (1945), the story that gives its title to the 1949 book.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.