Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If space is infinite, we may be at any point in space. If time is infinite, we may be at any point in time.
It means much to have loved, to have been happy, to have laid my hand on the living Garden, even for a day.
My father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read.
It seemed incredible to me that day without premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death .
Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety.
Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.
I am not sure of anything, I know nothing . . . can you imagine that I don't even know the date of my own death?
A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource.
His life, measured in space and time, will take up a mere few lines, which my ignorance will abbreviate further.
The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line
The mathematical sciences wield their particular language made of digits and signs, no less subtle than any other.
The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry.
God must not engage in theology. The writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us.
Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.
In Spanish it is very difficult to make things flow, because words are over-long. But in English, you have light words.
I have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification.
Mir Bahadur Ali is, as we have seen, incapable of evading the most vulgar of art's temptations: that of being a genius.
Yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso / Bajo la especie de una biblioteca. I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.
I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left.
I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left...
The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.
No one is a poet from eight to twelve and from two to six. Whoever is a poet is one always, and continually assaulted by poetry.
Captivated by its discipline, humanity forgets and goes on forgetting that it is the discipline of chess players, not of angels.
The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.
Perhaps the apparent favor of the universe is no more than the crocodile grin of a Doberman breathing hard and about to be hungry?
The poverty of yesterday was less squalid than the poverty we purchase with our industry today. Fortunes were smaller then as well.
I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text; he should change it into something else.
When you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.
What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?
One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
We have a very precise image - an image at times shameless - of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.
In the critics' vocabulary, the work 'precursor' is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemics or rivalry.
I don't think esthetic schools are important. What is important is the use that is made of them, or whatever the individual writer does.
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.
The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration.
He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.
Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.
My father and he had cemented one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.
The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.
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.
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.
The visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it.
Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.
He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.
This web of time--the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore eachother through the centuries--embrace every posibility.
In fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects.
There is no point in being overwhelmed by the appalling total of human sufferring; such a total does not exist. Neither poverty nor pain is accumulable.
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.
Blindness has not been for me a total misfortune; it should not be seen in a pathetic way. It should be seen as a way of life: one of the styles of living.