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.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
As we grow older, we recognize that our life choices were part of a larger journey, with both positive and negative outcomes.
This quote by Jorge Luis Borges reflects on the inevitability of life choices and their consequences. It suggests that, as we age, we gain perspective on our past actions and decisions, realizing that they were integral to our personal development. The acknowledgment that we could not have significantly altered our past experiences reinforces the idea that life is a complex tapestry of decisions, and acceptance of this can lead to personal growth and wisdom.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a graduation speech to remind students to embrace their future choices with confidence.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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The most powerful moral influence is example.
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.