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
There is no point in being overwhelmed by the appalling total of human sufferring; such a total does not exist. Neither poverty nor pain is accumulable.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that one should not become paralyzed by the enormity of human suffering since it cannot be quantified or accumulated.
Jorge Luis Borges articulates the idea that the immense weight of human suffering may feel overwhelming when considered as a whole; however, he asserts that suffering is not something that can be measured or compared like a total. Each individual's experience of pain and poverty is unique and cannot simply be added up or generalized, encouraging a perspective that focuses on individual experiences rather than a collective burden.
Themes
SufferingPerspectivePhilosophyIndividualityHuman Experience
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on humanitarian efforts, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of focusing on individual cases of suffering rather than becoming despondent about global issues.
More from Jorge Luis Borges
All quotes βTo 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
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When you have become God's in the measure he desires, then he himself will bestow you upon others; unless, to your greater glory, he chooses to keep you all to himself.
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