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
What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the transient nature of life and the significance of what one leaves behind after death.
In this quote, Borges contemplates the ephemeral qualities of existence and the personal memories and images that fade upon one's passing. He questions what aspects of his identity and experiences will be lost to the world when he dies, suggesting that our fleeting memories, both meaningful and mundane, contribute to our legacy and remind us of the stark reality of mortality.
Themes
MortalityLegacyIdentityMemoryTransience
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a funeral speech to highlight the lasting impressions and memories a person has left behind.
More from Jorge Luis Borges
All quotes →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
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