Infinity Theme Analysis

There is one conjecture, spoken from the mouths of masked heresiarchs, to the effect that the Company has never existed and never will. A conjecture no less vile argues that it is indifferently inconsequential to affirm or deny the reality of the shadowy corporation, because Babylon is nothing but an infinite game of chance.

Like all men of the Library, I have traveled in my youth. I have journeyed in search of a book, perhaps of the catalogue of catalogues; now that my eyes can scarcely decipher what I write, I am preparing to die a few leagues from the hexagon in which I was born.

To me it does not seem unlikely that on some shelf of the universe there lies a total book…. If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, let them be for others. May heaven exist, though my place be in hell. Let me be outraged and annihilated, but may Thy enormous Library be justified, for one instant, in one being.

“In all of [the infinite timelines],” I enunciated, with a tremor in my voice. “I deeply appreciate and am grateful to you for the restoration of Ts’ui Pen’s garden.”

“Not in all,” he murmured with a smile. “Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures and in one of them I am your enemy.”

“The next time I kill you,” said Scharlach, “I promise you the labyrinth made of a single straight line which is invisible and everlasting.”

He stepped back a few paces. Then, very carefully, he fired.

For his sake, God projected a secret miracle: German lead would kill him, at the determined hour, but in his mind a year would elapse between the command to fire and its execution. From perplexity he passed to stupor, from stupor to resignation, from resignation to sudden gratitude.