Luis Quotes

If we think of the novel and the epic ... The difference lies in the fact that the important thing about the epic is a hero
a man who is a pattern for all men. While, as Mencken pointed out, the essence of most novels lies in the breaking down of a man, in the degeneration of character. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

As a professional football player, I have known perfectly well from the day I started playing that every day I have to fight for my place. ~ Luis Figo

Day and night, their fail and crippled ships defy the tempest. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

List of Artists Who Created Fantasy Worlds to Try and Cure Bouts of Sadness
1. Italo Calvino
2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. Jim Henson and Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths
4. The creator of MySpace
5. Richard Brautigan
6. J.K. Rowling
7. The inventor of the children's toy Lite-Brite
8. Ann Sexton
9. David Foster Wallace
10. Gaugin and the Caribbean
11. Charles Schulz
12. Liam Rector ~ Shane Jones

When he lay beside me with his dog-breath sighs, it was if he was saying, Give me your sadness. I will take it, as much as you need. If it kills us both, so be it. I am here. ~ Luis Carlos Montalvan

This book first arose out of a passage in [Jorge Luis] Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought - our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography - breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a 'certain Chinese encyclopaedia' in which it is written that 'animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies'. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that. ~ Michel Foucault

Humans spend more time finding ways to fight and criticize who they consider a threat than actually learning how to overcome that threat. ~ Luis Marques

When I was a kid, I had to fight for everything. ~ Luis Suarez

There is always a chance to get even and I'm proud of the fact that for all the blows I always got back up again. That's what makes me most content. ~ Luis Suarez

Out of the decisions that we make in life, our Self emerges. What we choose in life is not the thing chosen out there, but oneself. ~ Luis Enrique Cavazos

The curious thing about The Ring and the Book, to which I will now return, is that although each character recounts the same events, and although there is no difference in what they tell, there is a fundamental difference, which belongs to the realm of human psychology, the fact that each of us believes we are justified. For example, the count admits he is a murderer, but the word "murderer" is too general. We know this from reading other books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The last few centuries have seen the world freed from several scourges-slavery, for example; death by torture for heretics; and, most recently, smallpox. I am optimistic enough to believe that the next scourge to disappear will be large-scale warfare-killed by the existence and nonuse of nuclear weapons. ~ Luis Walter Alvarez

The most important thing for me to succeed in is day by day becoming a better and more prepared person. ~ Luis Gerardo Mendez

How strange
it is. For perfect things in poetry do not seem strange;
they seem inevitable. And so we hardly thank the
writer for his pains. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Beyond the clouds, above people, beneath the skin, inside people, we're waiting for you. We see you now, as you read. We'll see you when you stop thinking about these words. Above and inside your face, we know your secrets. We know what you hide from yourself. You can't escape us. We hold your heart in the palm of our hand. If we like, we can squeeze it. If we like, we can crush it. There's nothing you can do to stop us. Our gaze notices your every single move and your every single word. Say a word now. Make a move. We smile at your words, as we smile at your silence. No one will be able to protect you. No one can protect you now. You're even less than you imagine. We've seen a thousand generations of men like you. It was our pleasure to let them walk on the lines of our hands. It was our pleasure to take everything away from them. We guided entire generations of men through tunnels we built that led nowhere. And when they arrived at nothing, we smiled. You're just like them. We're waiting for you above and inside your face. Continue on your way. Follow that line of our hand. We know where that tunnel you walk through will end. Keep on walking. We see you and smile. Beyond the clouds, we are fear. Beneath the skin, we are fear. ~ Jose Luis Peixoto

If you sell, say, two thousand copies, it is the same thing as if you had sold nothing at all because two thousand is too vast - I mean, for the imagination to grasp. While thirty-seven people - perhaps thirty-seven are too many, perhaps seventeen would have been better or even seven - but still thirty-seven are still within the scope of one's imagination. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

In this night too, in this night of his mortal eyes into which he was now descending, love and danger were again waiting ...
a murmur of glory and hexameters, of men defending a temple the gods will not save, and of black vessels searching the sea for a beloved isle;
the murmor of the Odysseys and Iliads it was his destiny to sing and leave echoing concavely in the memory of man.
These things we know, but not those he felt descending into the last shade of all. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Like all the men of Babylon, I have been proconsul; like all, I have been a slave. I have known omnipotence, ignominy, imprisonment. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I, that used to figure Paradise
In the guise of a library ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The church is like manure. Pile it up, and it stinks up the neighborhood. Spread it out, and it enriches the world. ~ Luis Palau

It seems jolly on the page. But imagine poverty, violence, natural disasters, or political fear driving you away from everything you know. Imagine how bad things get to make you leave behind your family, your friends, your lovers; your home, as humble as it might be; your church, say. Let's take it further - you've said good-bye to the graveyard, the dog, the goat, the mountains where you hunted, your grade school, your state, your favorite spot on the river where you fished and took time to think. ~ Luis Alberto Urrea

Of course I don't like the fact that my wife goes to the supermarket and there are photographers. But I realise that the press attention is the same wherever you go. ~ Luis Suarez

The world looked to them like a great roll of butcher paper unfurled on a table. ~ Luis Alberto Urrea

Chang Tzu tells us of a persevering man who after three laborious years mastered the art of dragon-slaying. For the rest of his days, he had not a single opportunity to test his skills. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

His life, measured in space and time, will take up a mere few lines, which my ignorance will abbreviate further. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The art of writing is mysterious, the opinions we hold are ephemeral ... ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The more equality women have, the fairer, more civilized and tolerant society will be. Sexual equality is a lot more effective against terrorism than military strength. ~ Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

Emma dropped the paper. Her first impression was of a weak feeling in her stomach and in her knees; then of blind guilt, of unreality, of coldness, of fear; then she wished that it were already the next day. Immediately afterwards she realized that that wish was futile because the death of her father was the only thing that had happened in the world, and it would go on happening endlessly. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

And I believe there was a rabbi who wrote that the Holy Scriptures were specifically destined, predestined, for each of its readers. That is, it has a different meaning if any of you read it or if I read it, or if it is read by men in the future or in the past. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Unappreciated because too many of his [Rudyard Kipling's] peers were socialists. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I ... confirm the fact - with a certain bittersweet melancholy - that everything in the world brings me back to a quotation or a book. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Luis is right there. I point to the corner of the yard, where my little brother is the centre of attention doing imitations of barnyard animals. I have yet to inform him that talent isn't as much of a chick magnet when you get into junior high. ~ Simone Elkeles

To play for Barcelona, means to have an opportunity for a brilliant career. But to reach the top of it, you have to play for Real Madrid. ~ Luis Figo

Many years ago a friend assured me that we are all islands. Once in a while, another island travels along with us for a short stretch, and then it goes away, it slips off to some other place, and we never see each other again. Life is nothing more than a system of good-byes. Of releases. Of mutilations. The truth is we are incapable of giving anyone what they really need. ~ Luis Eduardo Reyes

The dogs brought it all back to, you know, to the human side. ~ Luis Carlos Montalvan

Contrary to Eastern Europe, where the border was more porous and you could exchange information more easily, Cuba is an island. Thus, it is more isolated, and it's easier for the government to have great control over its citizens. ~ Luis Fortuno

My commitment is my commitment. ~ Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

I resent Washington telling states, or the residents of those states, what to do and what to think. ~ Luis Fortuno

It's a lifetime effort, trying to understand the way our minds work, and make it work in your favor and not against you. ~ Luis Gerardo Mendez

For me, beauty is a physical sensation, something we feel with our whole body. It is not the result of judgement. We do not arrive at it by way of rules. We either feel beauty or we don't. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

In football, day in day out, you always have to show your worth. ~ Luis Figo

It's a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

There is a river whose waters give
immortality; somewhere there must be
another river whose waters take it away. The
number of rivers is not infinite; an immortal
traveler wandering the world will someday have
drunk from them all. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I am, in fact, committed to being honest with myself so that I can overcome this situation. This includes not succumbing to the path of least resistance (denial) but rather the path of hardship which I know will lead to my evolution. ~ Luis Carlos Montalvan

In memory of Emily we would like everyone to go out and do random acts of kindness, random acts of love to your friends or your neighbors or your fellow students because there is no way to make sense of this. It's what Emily would have wanted. ~ Luis Gonzalez

Luis Fuentes reminded me that I'm still vulnerable. If I'm emotionally unavailable, then I don't have to worry about ever getting hurt. [ ... ] Nikki Cruz will no longer be vulnerable. ~ Simone Elkeles

He [Omar Khayyam] is an atheist, but knows how to interpret in orthodox style the most difficult passages of the Koran; for every educated man is a theologian and faith is not a requisite. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

When a writer dies, he becomes his books. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I think: perhaps the sky is a huge sea of fresh water and we, instead of walking under it, walk on top of it; perhaps we see everything upside down and the earth is a kind of sky, so that when we die, when we die, we fall and sink into the sky. ~ Jose Luis Peixoto

The deepest of powers are often the most subtle. Something that most fail to realize ... ~ Luis Marques

So where are they moving today? They're going to move to be meaner to immigrants in order to bring their conference together. ~ Luis Gutierrez

As 'Possession' progresses, it seems less and less like the usual satire about academia and more like something by Jorge Luis Borges. ~ Jay Parini

Why a should a dream be any less real than this table. Or Macbeth be less real than today's newspaper. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Men need to be strong, but not bullies. They need to know how to not get emotionally lost in situations, but not be cold and emotionless. They need to know the full variety of emotions as well as thinking and acting. Not just the most limited ways of doing things. ~ Luis J Rodriguez

Arthur Compton became my graduate advisor. He was the ideal graduate advisor for me: he came into my research room only once during my graduate career and usually had no idea how I was spending my time. ~ Luis W. Alvarez

From Hunayn ibn-Ishak (Diogenes,8), we learn about his view of women and education: when he saw a man teaching a girl how to read and write, he advised him not to make a bad thing even worse. ~ Luis E. Navia

I'm an emotional person, and I externalise my feelings a lot with some things, but I'm strong with others. ~ Luis Suarez

I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

So witless did these ideas strike me as being, so sweeping and pompous the way they were expressed, that I associated them immediately with literature. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The most hateful grief of all human griefs is this, to have knowledge of the truth but no power over the event. ~ Luis Carlos Montalvan

In Latin America the border between soccer and politics is vague. There is a long list of governments that have fallen or been overthrown after the defeat of the national team. ~ Luis Suarez

Mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of men ... ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Words are more dangerous than swords and guns. They reach further and hurt deeper. ~ Luis Marques

At clubs like Liverpool, great players come and go. ~ Luis Suarez

My theory was that a city without a newspaper is a city without a soul. ~ Luis A. Ferre

I grew up listening to a lot of Usher at 13 and 14. I have every Usher album that ever existed. So I grew up listening to a lot of Usher, Michael Jackson, Luis Miguel, a lot of pioneers in Latin music. ~ Prince Royce

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. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The main priority of the Socialist Party is education. ~ Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

Soccer is popular because stupidity is popular. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I think we all wish we could erase some dark times in our lives. But all of life's experiences, bad and good make you who you are. Erasing any of life's experiences would be a great mistake. ~ Luis Miguel

All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a share past ~ Jorge Luis Borges

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, and yet in others both of us exist. In this one, in which chance has favored me, you have come to my gate. In another, you, crossing the garden, have found me dead. In yet another, I say these very same words but am in error, a phantom Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures."

from "Garden of Forking Paths ~ Jorge Luis Borges

He couldn't have known it, but among the original run of The History of Love, at least one copy was destined to change a life.

This particular book was one of the last of the two thousand to be printed, and sat for longer than the rest in a warehouse in the outskirts of Santiago, absorbing the humidity. From there it was finally sent to a bookstore in Buenos Aires. The careless owner hardly noticed it, and for some years it languished on the shelves, acquiring a pattern of mildew across the cover. It was a slim volume, and its position on the shelf wasn't exactly prime: crowded on the left by an overweight biography of a minor actress, and on the right by the once-bestselling novel of an author that everyone had since forgotten, it hardly left its spine visible to even the most rigorous browser. When the store changed owners it fell victim to a massive clearance, and was trucked off to another warehouse, foul, dingy, crawling with daddy longlegs, where it remained in the dark and damp before finally being sent to a small secondhand bookstore not far from the home of the writer Jorge Luis Borges.

The owner took her time unpacking the books she'd bought cheaply and in bulk from the warehouse. One morning, going through the boxes, she discovered the mildewed copy of The History of Love. She'd never heard of it, but the title caught her eye. She put it aside, and during a slow hour in the shop she read the opening chapter, called 'The Age of Silence.'
Nicole Krauss

It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Suffering is tossed by handfuls over the multitudes, with most of it falling on some people and little or none of it on others. ~ Jose Luis Peixoto

Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but ... hypotheses may not. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

If we don't change, nothing will change, everything will continue as is or continue to worsen. ~ Luis Gutierrez-Poucel

Rita Vargas caught her breath - the dark was spilling out of the mountains as the sun vanished in the west. The deep purple/blue shadows spread out on the water of the Caribe. The ocean was shadowy, yet at the same time, glowing. The massif green on one side, and velvety black on the other. And below, the lights of the cities scattered and burned, white, yellow, white, looking like gems. Stars.
She still recalls it as one of the most beautiful sights she'd ever witnessed, as if the coast of Veracruz were somehow welcoming its sons home. It would have astounded the dead if the could have looked out the windows. Why would they ever have left such a beautiful home for the dry bones and spikes of the desert? If they could have seen what she saw, they might have stayed home. ~ Luis Alberto Urrea

It is not new or unusual for the real Americans, meaning those immigrants who came to America a little bit longer ago, to fear the outsiders, the pretenders, the newcomers. ~ Luis Gutierrez

The aesthetic event is something as evident, as immediate, as indefinable as love, the taste of fruit, as water. We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it further with words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings? ~ Jorge Luis Borges

You'll never forget October 9, 2005, ... Every time you see the National Mall, every time you see that [Capitol] building back there, every time you see the national monument, you'll say 'I met God on the National Mall.' ~ Luis Palau

We are bound to expire. Even metal which is sturdiest, rusts. Even oxygen, the breath of life, soon transpires. ~ Luis Medina

go ahead and kill us,we're already dead... ~ Luis J Rodriguez

My books standing there on the shelf do not know that I have written them. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The Indians are a marginal people in Guatemala just like I am a marginal person in the first world. ~ Luis Gonzalez

But knowing the difficulties didn't make Tuesday's lack of focus easier for me. When Tuesday was distracted, I felt unsure. In the years ahead, I learned to read his reactions. I knew when his mind was wandering, when he was merely interested in something (Squirrel! Urine-smelling tree!), and when he was alert to possible danger. Knowing Tuesday's mood calmed my mind, because I could trust his vigilance. Today, I can walk down the street distracted and carefree because I have faith Tuesday will alert me to danger. In those early months, before I'd learn to trust his instincts, Tuesday's greatest contribution was his presence. He was my point man, walking slightly ahead of me, symbolically leading the way. He was a buffer against the world, but also a diversion. If they were going to look at me, most people looked at Tuesday first, and that was a relief. ~ Luis Carlos Montalvan

There is a line in Verlaine I shall not recall again,
There is a street close by forbidden to my feet,
There's a mirror that's seen me for the very last time,
There is a door that I have locked till the end of the world.
Among the books in my library (I have them before me)
There are some that I shall never open now.
This summer I complete my fiftieth year;
Death is gnawing at me ceaselessly. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I saw a sunset in Queretaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

-This young woman is an infernal abortion. She is Satan incarnate, for who is better to portray Satan than a rebellious woman? ~ Luis Alberto Urrea

Reading ... is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

There is nothing very remarkable about
being immortal; with the exception of mankind,
all creatures are immortal, for they know
nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and
incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Many people have thought of me as a thinker, as a philosopher, or even as a mystic. Well the truth is that though I have found reality perplexing enough - in fact, I find it gets more perplexing all the time - I never think of myself as a thinker. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend to be frightful. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Blind to all fault, destiny can be ruthless at one's slightest distraction. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I forgot to say - a merely curious detail - that in one of the first chapters of Sartor Resartus, when speaking about garments, Carlyle says that the simplest garment he knows of was used by the cavalry of Bolivar in the South American war. And here we have a description of the poncho as "a blanket with a hole in the middle," under which he imagines Bolivar's cavalry soldier, he imagines him - simplifying it a bit - "mother naked," as naked as when he came out of his mother's belly, covered by the poncho, with only his sword and his spear."25 ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I put a lot of weight on feelings and am weirdly in touch with them, which is not typical for an engineer. ~ Luis Von Ahn

One particular aspect of the civic republican tradition that obviously caught Mr. Zapatero's attention was the eyeball test to which Pettit had drawn attention in his book (1997, 166; see also chapter 2 in this volume). According to this test you enjoy freedom in relation to others - to a particular other or to others as represented in a group or in a government - only insofar as you can look them in the eye, without fear or deference, with a shared consciousness of this equal status. ~ Jose Luis Marti

Emerson said that a library is a magic chamber in which there are many enchanted spirits. They wake when we call them. When the book lies unopened, it is literally, geometrically, a volume, a thing among things. When we open it, when the book surrenders itself to its reader, the aesthetic event occurs. And even for the same reader the same book changes, for the change; we are the river of Heraclitus, who said that the man of yesterday is not the man of today, who will not be the man of tomorrow. We change incessantly, and each reading of a book, each rereading, each memory of that rereading, reinvents the text. The text too is the changing river of Heraclitus. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I really did not think much about the size of the transfer fee when I left Barcelona because it was all down to market forces, not me. ~ Luis Figo

I don't read the papers or watch TV. ~ Luis Suarez