I think I understood love better when I had no love.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Borges suggests understanding deepens through absence, implying love is grasped better when missing.
- In plain terms
- You understand love better without it.
- What can you take from it?
- Loss clarifies value.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What do you understand better without?
- Does loss teach or just hurt?
Another view
Absence may also breed bitterness rather than understanding.
More from Jorge Luis Borges
Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment - the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
Permalink to quote #134 Death (or its allusion) makes men precious and pathetic. They are moving because of their phantom condition; every act they execute may be their last; there is…
Permalink to quote #136 Yo no hablo de venganzas ni perdones, el olvido es la unica venganza y el unico perdon.
Permalink to quote #133
Related quotes
Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.
Alphonse de LamartineAlphonse de Lamartine quote #10 True love cannot be changed, Though delight from desert Be estranged. Farewell, farewell But yet or ere I part (O cruel), Kiss me sweet, kiss me sweet my jewel.
John DowlandJohn Dowland quote #1 Before you, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars, points of light and reason. And then you shot across the sky, like a meteor. Su…
Stephenie MeyerStephenie Meyer quote #1