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About this quote

What does it mean?
Every literary act is the result of infinite past causes and will cause infinite future effects.
In plain terms
Writing is never isolated; it comes from endless history and creates endless reactions.
What can you take from it?
See your work as part of a long chain of events.

Where it applies

  • writing
  • research
  • criticism

Putting it to work

  • trace influences
  • anticipate effects

Questions to consider

  • What caused your last idea?
  • What will your words cause?

Another view

Some actions have minimal or negligible impact.

More from Jorge Luis Borges

  1. To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.

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  2. Coleridge observes that all men are born Aristotelians or Platonists. The latter feel that classes, orders, and genres are realities; the former, that they are…

    Permalink to quote #104
  3. The future is inevitable and precise, but it may not occur. God lurks in the gaps.

    Permalink to quote #101

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