Great Throughts Treasury

"There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite."

"To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely."

"Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment - the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is."

"Men who live in the present do not look forward to their fates."

"Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire."

"The serene decision of the tombs is beautiful, their uncompromising architecture and the little squares with the coolness of a patio and the isolation and eternal individuation; each contemplated his own death, unique and personal like a memory. The quietude pleases us, we confuse such peace in life with dying and while we believe we desire not to be , we are praying for a peaceful life."

"You may win your heart’s desire, but in the end you’re cheated of it by death."

"Reality favors symmetry."

"Reality is not always probably, or likely."

"What you really value is what you miss, not what you have."

"Democracy is an abuse of statistics. "

"To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god."

"Doubt is one of the names of intelligence."

"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. "

"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."

"Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures."

"All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."

"Universal history is the history of a few metaphors."

"This web of time — the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries — embrace every possibility."

"The future is inevitable and precise, but it may not occur. God lurks in the gaps."

"Myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end."

"The impossibility of penetrating the divine pattern of the universe cannot stop us from planning human patterns, even though we are conscious they are not definitive. "

"A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words?or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols?spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word."

"A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships."

"A hundred years, human beings can do without the love and friendship. Aches and unintentional death are no longer a threat to him. This practice any art, he devoted himself to philosophy, mathematics or he plays solitaire chess. When he wants to, he kills himself. Master of his life, the man is also his death. [30]"

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

"A classic book is a book which generations of men, driven by various reasons, read with that same initial fervor and that same mysterious loyalty."

"A good player is as rare as a good writer."

"A circle drawn on a blackboard, a right triangle, a rhombus--all these are forms we can fully intuit; Ireneo could do the same with the stormy mane of a young colt, a small herd of cattle on a mountainside, a flickering fire and its uncountable ashes, and the many faces of a dead man at a wake. I have no idea how many stars he saw in the sky."

"A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face."

"A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time ? this one, for instance ? as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like."

"A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face."

"A labyrinth of symbols... An invisible labyrinth of time."

"A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face."

"A man the task of drawing the world is proposed. Over the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face."

"A poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor."

"A miracle has the right to impose conditions."

"A system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to any one of such aspects."

"A Reality favors symmetries and slight anachronisms."

"A Parting: Dusk you've undermined our breakup. Dusk sharp, charming and monstrous, like a dark angel. Dusk where our mouths have known privacy pure kisses. Time inevitably spilled over hugging unnecessary. We were squandering of passion together, for us, but loneliness that soon to come. Light has rejected us; the night had arrived in a hurry. I drove home the gravity clock shadow that only the paragon of a attenuates. As one who comes back - a meadow lost, so I turned myself off from hugging you. As one who comes back from the realm of swords, so I turned myself in your tears. Dusk you stay living a dream through one of the other insertions. I to touch and then leave behind one by one nights away."

"A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."

"A writer always begins by being too complicated?he?s playing at several games at once."

"A writer needs loneliness, and he gets his share of it. He needs love, and he gets shared and also unshared love. He needs friendship. In fact, he needs the universe. To be a writer is, in a sense, to be a day-dreamer - to be living a kind of double life."

"A writer should have another lifetime to see if he's appreciated."

"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."

"A writer?and, I believe, generally all persons?must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource."

"A writer's work is the product of laziness."

"According to the idealistic doctrine, verbs living and dreaming are rigorously synonymous."

"A: Absorbed in our discussion of immortality, we had let night fall without lighting the lamp, and we couldn't see each other's faces. With an offhandedness or gentleness more convincing than passion would have been, Macedonio Fernandez' voice said once more that the soul is immortal. He assured me that the death of the body is altogether insignificant, and that dying has to be the most unimportant thing that can happen to a man. I was playing with Macedonio's pocketknife, opening and closing it. A nearby accordion was infinitely dispatching La Comparsita, that dismaying trifle that so many people like because it's been misrepresented to them as being old... I suggested to Macedonio that we kill ourselves, so we might have our discussion without all that racket. Z: (mockingly) But I suspect that at the last moment you reconsidered. A: (now deep in mysticism) Quite frankly, I don't remember whether we committed suicide that night or not."

"Ab¡a effortlessly learned English, French, Portuguese, Latin. I suspect, however, that was not very capable of thought. Thinking is forget differences, is generalize, to abstract. In the crowded world of Funes there were only details, almost immediate."