How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #4
In earlier times, there was one man for every three hexagons. Suicide and diseases of the lung have played havoc with that proportion. An unspeakably melancholy memory: I have sometimes traveled for nights on end, down corridors and polished staircases, without coming across a single librarian. (Footnote 2)
All right, it's clear we're not just talking about the mortality of one individual here. We're talking about the mortality of the entire human race.
Quote #5
These pilgrims squabbled in the narrow corridors, muttered dark imprecations, strangled one another on the divine staircases, threw deceiving volumes down ventilation shafts, were themselves hurled to their deaths by men of distant regions. (8)
Well, that's one way to go – murder. The Library, despite being orderly and structured to the extreme, is still the setting for messy human conflict and violence.
Quote #6
If the honor and wisdom and joy of such a reading are not to be my own, then let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my own place be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification. (12)
The narrator's metaphysical beliefs hint at his understanding of his own mortality. He is going to suffer and die, but whomever he's praying to will live on forever.