BORGES - WRITING READING LIFE

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” 

 

 

 

 “I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”

 

 “Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.”

 “I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.”

 

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

 

“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.”

 

“The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.”

 

 “When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation."

 

 “Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.”

  “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.” 

 

“Life itself is a quotation.” 

 

 

And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,

And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,

After a while you learn…
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.

With every good-bye you learn.”

 “Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.”

 

 

“The original is unfaithful to the translation.”

 

 

 “Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.”

 

                                       “Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.”

 

 

 

MATTER FOR CONTEMPLATION

Like the measles love is most dangerous when it comes late in life...


"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
L.P. Hartley

LOVE AND OPPORTUNITY

LOVE NEVER COMES AT THE RIGHT TIME

WHAT PINDAR SAID - I

Words have a longer life than deeds.

 

 

 

 Learn what you are and be such.

 

Seek not, my soul, the life of the immortals; but enjoy to the full the resources that are within thy reach.

 

Every gift which is given, even though is be small, is in reality great, if it is given with affection.

 

A graceful and honorable old age is the childhood of immortality.

 

Many a time the thing left silent makes for happiness.

 

François de La Rochefoucauld





• Il ne faut pas s'offenser que les autres nous cachent la vérité, puisque nous nous la cachons si souvent à nous-mêmes.
• Maxim 11.

• Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d'autrui.
• Maxim 19.

Le mal que nous faisons ne nous attire pas tant de persécution et de haine que nos bonnes qualités.

• Maxim 29.

• Si nous n'avions point de défauts, nous ne prendrions pas tant de plaisir à en remarquer dans les autres.
• Maxim 31.

• La jalousie se nourrit dans les doutes, et elle devient fureur, ou elle finit, sitôt qu'on passe du doute à la certitude.
Maxim 32.

• L'intérêt parle toutes sortes de langues, et joue toutes sortes de personnages, même celui de désintéressé.
• Maxim 39.

• On n'est jamais si heureux ni si malheureux qu'on s'imagine.
• Maxim 49.

• La sincérité est une ouverture de coeur. On la trouve en fort peu de gens; et celle que l'on voit d'ordinaire n'est qu'une fine dissimulation pour attirer la confiance des autres.
• Maxim 62.

• La bonne grâce est au corps ce que le bon sens est à l'esprit.
• Maxim 67.

• Il est difficile de définir l'amour. Dans l'âme c'est une passion de régner, dans les esprits c'est une sympathie, et dans le corps ce n'est qu'une envie cachée et délicate de posséder ce que l'on aime après beaucoup de mystères.
• Maxim 68.

• Il n'y a guère de gens qui ne soient honteux de s'être aimés, quand ils ne s'aiment plus.
• Maxim 71.

• Si on juge de l'amour par la plupart de ses effets, il ressemble plus à la haine qu'à l'amitié.
• Maxim 72.

• On peut trouver des femmes qui n'ont jamais eu de galanterie; mais il est rare d'en trouver qui n'en aient jamais eu qu'une.
• Maxim 73.

• Il n'y a qu'une sorte d'amour, mais il y en a mille différentes copies.
• Maxim 74.

• Il est du véritable amour comme de l'apparition des esprits: tout le monde en parle, mais peu de gens en ont vu.
• Maxim 76.

THINKING ON LOVE

IN LOVE GENDER MAKES NO MATTER

OUT OF TUNE _ FORLORN

 

The World Is Too Much With Us 

      

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

 

  William Wordsworth - 1770-1850