It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.

The original is unfaithful to the translation.

The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse to that of Poe, who reasoned, or feigned to reason, that the writing of a poem is an act of the intelligence. It never fails to amaze me that the classics hold a romantic theory of poetry, and a romantic poet a classical theory.

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.

The people of Tlön are taught that the act of counting modifies the amount counted, turning indefinites into definites. The fact that several persons counting the same quantity come to the same result is for the psychologists of Tlön an example of the association of ideas or of memorization.

For myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end.

The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men.