Borges, Flowers and the Flower of Coleridge quotes

'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 generalizations. For the latter, language is nothing but an approximative set of symbols; for the former, it is the map of the universe. The Platonist knows that the universe is somehow a cosmos, an order; that order, for the Aristotelian, can be an error or a fiction of our partial knowledge. Across the latitudes and the epochs, the two immortal antagonists change their name and language: one is Parmenides, Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Francis Bradley; the other, Heraclitus, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, William James.'

(Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986),

'In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects.'

(Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), Argentinian author. "The Flower of Coleridge" ["La flor de Coleridge"], Other Inquisitions [Otras inquisiciones] (1952).)