Jorge Luis Borges · 1 pages
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“In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“This web of time – the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries – embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of the others. In the almost unfathomable Ts'ui Pen, he chooses – simultaneously – all of them. He thus creates various futures, various times which start others that will in their turn branch out and bifurcate in other times. That is the cause of the contradictions in the novel.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“To think is to ignore the differences, to generalize, to abstract.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“Diferentemente de Newton e de Schopenhauer, seu antepassado não acretitava num tempo uniforme, absoluto. Acreditava em infinitas séries de tempos, numa rede crescente e vertiginosa de tempos que se aproximam, se bifurcam, se cortam ou que secularmente se ignoram, abrange todas as possibilidades. Não existimos na maioria desses tempos; nalguns existe o senhor e não eu. Noutros, eu, não o senhor; noutros, os dois. Neste, que um acaso favorável me surpreende, o senhor chegou a minha casa; noutro, o senhor, ao atravessar o jardim, encontrou-me morto; noutro, digo estas mesmas palavras, mas sou um erro, um fantasma.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“Cervantes' text and Menard's are verbally identical; but the second is almost infinitely richer.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“I kept asking myself how a book could be infinite. I could not imagine any other than a cyclic volume, circular. A volume whose last page would be the same as the first and so have the possibility of continuing indefinitely.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“I thought that a man might be an enemy of other men, of the differing moments of other men, but never an enemy of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams, or the West wind.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“Lost in these imaginary illusions I forgot my destiny – that of the hunted.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“I carried out my plan because I felt The Chief had some fear of those of my race, of those uncountable forebears whose culmination lies in me. I wished to prove to him that a yellow man could save his armies.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“Tek bir insanın yaptığı, sanki bütün insanlar tarafından yapılmış gibidir. Bu nedenle cennet bahçesindeki söz dinlemezliğin bütün insanlığı kirletmesi haksızlık sayılmaz; gene bu nedenle tek bir Yahudi'nin çarmıha gerilmesinin insanlığı kurtarmaya yetmesi de haksızlık sayılmaz. Belki de Schopenhauer haklıydı; ben başkalarıyım, her insan bütün insanlardır. Shakespeare de neredeyse, zavallı John Vincent Moon'dur.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“At the railroad station he noted that he still had thirty minutes. He quickly recalled that in a cafe on the Calle Brazil (a few dozen feet from Yrigoyen's house) there was an enormous cat which allowed itself to be caressed as if it were a disdainful divinity. He entered the cafe. There was the cat, asleep. He ordered a cup of coffee, slowly stirred the sugar, sipped it (this pleasure had been denied him in the clinic), and thought, as he smoothed the cat's black coat, that this contact was an illusion and that the two beings, man and cat, were as good as separated by a glass, for man lives in time, in succession, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“On üçüncü yüzyılın son yıllarında yaşayan bir leopar, sabahın şafağından akşamın alacakaranlığına kadar birkaç kalas, birkaç demir parmaklık, durmadan değişen erkek ve kadın yüzleri, bir duvar ve belki de kuru yapraklarla dolu taş bir yalak gördü. Sevgiyi ve yırtıcılığı, avını parçalamanın harlı zevkini, geyik kokuları getiren rüzgârı özlediğini bilemedi, bilemezdi. Gene de içinde bir şeyler tıkandı, bir şeyler isyan etti ve Tanrı ona rüyasında şunları söyledi: “Kullarımdan biri seni şu kadar kere görsün ve seni evrenin düzeninde yeri önceden belli bir şiirde bir suret ve simge olarak kullansın diye bu hapishanede yaşayacak ve öleceksin. Şimdi tutsaksın, ama şiire bir sözcük katmış olacaksın.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“I fed on one of the true monsters—one of the many 'witch hunters' who interrogated and jailed the accused, seeking guilt where there was none. How humans can do such things to their fellows is beyond me. They torture, main and kill their own kind, saying it is God's will.”
― Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, quote from In the Forests of the Night
“Wounds to the flesh hurt but they heal fast. Wounds to the soul never go away. It’s how we cope with a pain that never dies that makes us the people we are. Daily, people demonstrate acts of courage just so they can get through to the night.”
― Kristen Ashley, quote from Golden Trail
“When you push someone too far, they will push back and they push hard.”
― Rachel Vincent, quote from My Soul to Keep
“He was not great; he was, in fact, very small. At the same moment, though, he was important, just as any point of light in a dark sky might be the star that led a mariner to safety, or the star watched by a lonely child during a sleepless night. . . .”
― Tad Williams, quote from Stone of Farewell
“His gaze on mine was completely steady and unblinking, and there was an upward curl at the corners of his mouth . . . he was smiling like he was actually enjoying this.
But I couldn't help feeling as if, behind those blue eyes, there was a different Christopher – the old Christopher – begging me to call him on his asinine behavior. To say, I'm asking for your help now. Will you help us? Will you help me?
Only I didn't.
Because I was too angry with him. Why was he acting like such a four-year-old? I'd already explained to him why I'd made the decisions I had. They'd been perfectly decent, rational decisions.
So why was he acting this way?”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Runaway
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