Aleph Quotes

We can never found the soul, just as we can never wound God, but we become imprisoned by our memories, and that makes our lives wretched, even when we have everything we need in order to be happy. ~ Paulo Coelho

Wait", I say. "That's-you-what?"
"That's what I love about working with you, Valchek. Your eloquence."
"But -but- but-"
"And your motorboat impressions."
"Charlie, if you were there, why didn't you arrest him? ~ D.D. Barant

I've never been as happy as I am now, because I followed the signs, I was patient, and I know that this is going to change everything. ~ Paulo Coelho

Most people need a reason to argue - you just need a place. ~ D.D. Barant

I'm in position." Charlie's voice, coming through my earpiece.
"Wish I could say the same. All the blood's rushing to my head."
"Thrope stuff?" Charlie sounds a little worried.
"No, I'm upside down."
"Why?"
"I thought it would make me look all cool and ninja-y."
"No one's supposed to be bale to see you."
"Ah. I knew there was a flaw in my plan. Also, i slipped."
"In fact, the whole point of being a ninja is not to be seen."
"Fortunately I have this nifty safety harness, which is why I'm dangling instead of plummeting. Thanks for asking. ~ D.D. Barant

As a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight. ~ Jose Luis Borges

If I can understand what's going on
in the world, I can understand what's going on inside myself ~ Paulo Coelho

Don't think about what you'll tell people afterward. The time is here and now. Make the most of it. ~ Paulo Coelho

As Borges himself showed us in so many stories - "The Aleph", "The Garden of Forking Paths", "The Gift", "Blue Tigers", "Shakespeare's Memory" - a blessing is always a mixed blessing.
As Borges noted sadly, he inherited a library, and blindness; we who study Borges inherit great sight, yet the rest of the library somehow fades.

(pg 303, "What I Lost When I Translated Jorge Luis Borges") ~ Andrew Hurley

When the soul is consciously awakened can it comprehend the acquiescence of Muhammad, the unshakable foundation of Abraham and the very nature of Christ, equating the Aleph in the sealed Universe - As The Soul Speaks ~ AainaA-Ridtz

He remembered a story Madrigal had told him once: the human tale of the golem. It was a thing shaped of clay in the form of a man, brought to life by carving the symbol aleph into its brow. Aleph was the first symbol of an ancestral human alphabet, and the first letter of the Hebrew word truth; it was the beginning. Watching Karou rise to her feet, radiant in a fall of lapis hai, in a woven dress the colour of tangerines, with a loop of silver beads at her throat and a look of joy and relief and ... love ... on her beautiful face, Akiva knew that she was his aleph, his truth and beginning. His soul. ~ Laini Taylor

It is possible to avoid pain? Yes, but you'll never learn anything. Is it possible to know something without ever having experiencing it? Yes, but it will never truly be part of you. ~ Paulo Coelho

Every transfinite consistent multiplicity, that is, every transfinite set, must have a definite aleph as its cardinal number. ~ Georg Cantor

But the Semitic names did possess meaning in Semitic languages: they were the words for familiar objects ('aleph = ox, beth = house, gimel = camel, daleth = door, and so on). These Semitic words were related "acrophonically" to the Semitic consonants to which they refer: that is, the first letter of the word for the object was also the letter named for the object ('a, b, g, d, and so on). In addition, the earliest forms of the Semitic letters appear in many cases to have been pictures of those same objects. All these features made the forms, names, and sequence of Semitic alphabet letters easy to remember. Many ~ Jared Diamond

What eternity is to time, the Aleph is to space. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

We are all souls wandering the cosmos and, at the same time, living our lives, but with a sense that we are passing from one incarnation to another. If something touches to the code of our soul, it is remembered for ever and affects whatever comes afterwards. ~ Paulo Coelho

I receive your love and I give you mine. Not the love of a man for a woman, not the love of a father for a child, not the love of God for his creatures. But a love with no name and no explanation like a river that cannot explain why it follows a particular course, but simply flows onwards. A love that asks for nothing and gives nothing in return; it is simply there. I will never be yours and you will never be mine; nevertheless, I can honestly say: I love you ~ Paulo Coelho

Is it possible to fix love and make it stand still in time? Well, we can try, but that would turn our lives into a hell. I haven't been married for more than 20 years to the same person, because neither she nor I have remained the same. That's why our relationship is more alive than ever. I don't expect her to behave as she did when we first met. Nor does she want me to be the person I was when I found her. Love is beyond time, or, rather, love is both time and space, but all focused on one single constantly evolving point
the Aleph. ~ Paulo Coelho

Once the pain threshold has been crossed, the spirit grows strong. Everyday desires become meaningless, and man is purified. Suffering comes from desire, not from pain.
Aleph ~ Paulo Coelho

Conflict is essential to evolution.
-Aleph, Paulo Coelho ~ Paulo Coelho

I am told that César Aira writes two books a year, at least, some of which are published by a little Argentinean company named Beatriz Viterbo, after the character in Borges's story "The Aleph." The books of his that I have been able to find were published by Mondadori and and Tusquets Argentina. It's frustrating, because once you've started reading Aira, you don't want to stop. His novels seem to put the theories of Gombrowicz into practice, except, and the difference is fundamental, that Gombrowicz was the abbot of a luxurious imaginary monastery, while Aira is a nun or novice among the Discalced Carmelites of the Word. Sometimes he is reminiscent of Roussel (Roussel on his knees in a bath red with blood), but the only living writer to whom he can be compared is Barcelona's Enrique Vila-Matas.

Aira is an eccentric, but he is also one of the three or four best writers working in Spanish today. ~ Roberto Bolano

This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbours, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of text. Is the aleph, that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than an alphabet? ~ Georges Perec

The religion of the name of the seas will triumph against the sect of the son of Adaluncatif; The obstinate, lamented sect will be fearful of the two wounded by Aleph and Aleph. ~ Nostradamus

One day or one night - between my days and nights, what difference can there be? - I dreamed that there was a grain of sand on the floor of my cell. Unconcerned, I went back to sleep; I dreamed that I woke up and there were two grains of sand. Again I slept; I dreamed that now there were three. Thus the grains of sand multiplied, little by little, until they filled the cell and I was dying beneath that hemisphere of sand. I realized that I was dreaming; with a vast effort I woke myself. But waking up was useless - I was suffocated by the countless sand. Someone said to me:

You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of the grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.

I felt lost. The sand crushed my mouth, but I cried out: I cannot be killed by sand that I dream - nor is there any such thing as a dream within a dream.

- Jorge Luis Borges, The Writing of the God ~ Jorge Luis Borges