Themes in Borges' Labyrinths

For now this will just be a repository of thematic sentences or phrases from the stories in Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths, which I am quickly falling in love with.

The God's Script
The presence of god in everything, the religious experience, finding salvation, etc. There's a lot going on in this that I'm missing.

The Waiting
A haunting tale about waiting for fate, about dreaming reality. This story makes me sad.

The Zahir
A story of losing oneself inadvertently in obsession.

Averroes' Search
A meditation on meaning and knowledge.

Deutsches Requiem
A powerful exploration of the mindset of a committed Nazi.

The House of Asterion
The story of the Minotaur told from the perspective of the Minotaur. Led me to read about Grendel.

Emma Zunz
Enjoyable - a revenge killing that examines fate and retribution.

Story of the Warrior and the Captive
More on duality.

The Theologians
"Aurelian spoke with God and... He was so little interested in religious differences that He mistook him for [his chief rival]."

The Immortal 
"Death (or its allusion) makes men precious and pathetic."
"... shortly, I shall be all men, I shall be dead."

The Sect of the Phoenix
The secret one.

Three Versions of Judas
Was Judas the ultimate follower of Jesus? Was his sacrifice necessary, and should it therefore be celebrated?

The Secret Miracle
A Jewish author killed by firing squad composes his opus in his head while frozen in time for a year as the bullets hang in mid-air.

Death and the Compass
The French detective/Kabbalah one.

Theme of the Traitor and the Hero


The Library of Babel
Endless possibilities - what meaning can we find?

---

Funes the Memorious

"To think is to forget differences..."

The Shape of the Sword

"Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it... I am all other men, any man is all men."

The Circular Ruins

"With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another."

Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote

"Thinking, analyzing, inventing are not anomalous acts; they are the normal respiration of the intelligence."

The Lottery of Babylon

"Babylon is nothing else than an infinite game of chance."

The Garden of Forking Paths

"This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time."

Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

"A scattered dynasty of solitary men has changed the face of the world."