My undertaking is not difficult, essentially... I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- The author claims their project would only be difficult if they were not immortal, implying it requires infinite time.
- In plain terms
- The author says their task would be easy if they lived forever.
- What can you take from it?
- Infinite time makes difficult tasks manageable.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What could you do if you lived forever?
- Is your task too big for one life?
Another view
It ignores the practical impossibility of immortality.
More from Jorge Luis Borges
Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minu…
Permalink to quote #63 There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe;…
Permalink to quote #65 Nowadays, one of the churches of Tlon maintains platonically that such and such a pain, such and such a greenish-yellow colour, such and such a temperature, su…
Permalink to quote #62
Related quotes
Niggle was a painter. Not a very successful one, partly because he had many other things to do. Most of these things he thought were a nuisance; but he did the…
J. R. R. TolkienJ. R. R. Tolkien quote #14 Films and gramophone records, music, books and buildings show clearly how vigorously a man's life and work go on after his death, whether we feel it or not, wh…
Martin BormannMartin Bormann quote #2 Your pictures would have been finished a long time ago if I were not forced every day to do something to earn money.
Edgar DegasEdgar Degas quote #3