QuoteProject
Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety.
Jorge Luis Borges
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote highlights the awareness of knowledge gaps even among those who possess vast resources of information.

In this quote, Borges reflects on the irony of possessing a library while simultaneously recognizing the limitations of one's own knowledge. Aurelian's realization serves as a reminder that even with access to extensive information, true understanding often eludes us, emphasizing the value of continuous learning and the acknowledgment of our own ignorance.

Themes

KnowledgeLibraryIgnoranceLearningSelf-Awareness

In practice

Example use cases

During a lecture on the importance of continual education, I would quote this to emphasize our limits in knowledge.

More from Jorge Luis Borges

You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead

Similar quotes

Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments – and to organized religions as well. That is why governments and religious organizations seek to control education.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiRead
With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes.
John IrvingRead
We have a large public that is very ignorant about public affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans
Zbigniew BrzezinskiRead
When children attend schools that place a greater value on discipline and security than on knowledge and intellectual development, they are attending prep schools for prison.
Angela DavisRead
He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.
William FaulknerRead
Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for this is deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book. We don't just read the words, we dream our lives in their vicinity. The printed page becomes a kind of wrought-iron fence we crawl through, returning, once we have wandered, to the very place we started.
Sven BirkertsRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Jorge Luis Borges | QuoteProject