Once I came up with the idea of bookshelves personalised with quotes,
the problem was choosing suitable quotes.
I used a variety of quotes from many writers over the years, but the ery first two were conceived as a pair. Can you spot the connection?

The top one says:
"How easy it would be not to think of a tiger" J. L. Borges.

Jorge Louis Borges is an Argentinian author who wrote mind-blowing fantastical/mystical short stories.
The quote is from a piece called The Zahir. The narrator becomes obsessed by a magical object (a coin) that takes over his mind. As his every thought is possessed by the Zahir, he wishes that it could have been something else, something easier to ignore, more forgettable... a tiger perhaps?

The second one reads:
"Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus" - Bernard of Morlay

This is a line from a 12th Century poem about the vanity of worldly things.
I came across this as it is the closing line of one of my all time favourite novels, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (and indeed the line that gives the book its title).
The last few paragraphs of the novel are a loose paraphrase of Bernard's poem :Est ubi gloria nunc Babylonia? Where is the glory of Babylon? Where is the fame of the great warriors and emperors? Everything passes.The rose remains in full bloom only in name - in the idea of the rose - the actual physical rose withers and fades. All we have left are empty words.