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
We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that our understanding of complex concepts, like the dragon or the universe, is limited and filled with mystery.
In this quote, Borges emphasizes the profound ignorance that humanity shares regarding the deeper meanings of both mythical creatures and the universe itself. It suggests that just as we struggle to comprehend what dragons symbolize in mythology, we similarly grapple with the vastness and significance of existence, highlighting the limitations of human understanding and the mysterious nature of reality.
In practice
In a philosophical discussion about the nature of existence.
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.
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.
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.
While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.
My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat just keeps right on doing bad, dumb things.
For after the Battle comes quiet.
An armed society is a polite society.
One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to fight for freedom.
I am baffled by the way sophisticated theologians who know Adam and Eve never existed still keep talking about it.
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