Octavio Paz Quotes - Page 4

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• Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.

  Octavio Paz

  Expression, History, Silence

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.172, Arcade Publishing

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• Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone: it is the opening of an impalpable, transparent wall-that of our consciousness-between the world and ourselves.

  Octavio Paz

  Wall, Discovery, Self

  Octavio Paz (1985). “The Labyrinth of Solitude: And the Other Mexico ; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude ; Mexico and the United States ; The Philanthropic Ogre”, p.9, Grove Press

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• Solitude lies at the lowest depth of the human condition. Man is the only being who feels himself to be alone and the only one who is searching for the Other.

  Octavio Paz

  Lying, Adventure, Men

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• Tradition is no longer a continuity but a series of sharp breaks. The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt.

  Octavio Paz

  Tradition, Modern, Break

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.17, Arcade Publishing

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• Death is the mother of forms.

  Octavio Paz

  Death, Mother, Form

  Octavio Paz, Eliot Weinberger, G. Aroul (1984). “Selected Poems”, p.133, New Directions Publishing

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• Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game.

  Octavio Paz

  Beauty, Art, Games

  Octavio Paz (1991). “On Poets and Others”, p.74, Arcade Publishing

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• Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.

  Octavio Paz

  Lying, Power, Technology

  1967 Alternating Current.

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• Two opposing forces inhabit the poem: one of elevation or up-rooting, which pulls the word from the language: the other of gravity, which makes it return. The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is also reading and recitation: participation. The poet creates it; the people, by recitation, re-create it. Poet and reader are two moments of a single reality.

  Octavio Paz

  Art, Reading, Unique

  Octavio Paz (2009). “The Bow and the Lyre: The Poem, The Poetic Revelation, Poetry and History”, p.28, University of Texas Press

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• By diminishing the value of silence, publicity has also diminished that of language. The two are inseparable: knowing how to speak has always meant knowing how to keep silent, knowing that there are times when one should say nothing.

  Octavio Paz

  Two, Knowing, Silence

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.96, Arcade Publishing

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• The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us

  Octavio Paz

  Civilization, Progress, Technique

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• When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous. As a result, social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings

  Octavio Paz

  Criticism, Decay, Firsts

  Octavio Paz (1985). “The Labyrinth of Solitude: And the Other Mexico ; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude ; Mexico and the United States ; The Philanthropic Ogre”, p.263, Grove Press

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• Mineral cactai, quicksilver lizards in the adobe walls, the bird that punctures space, thirst, tedium, clouds of dust, impalpable epiphanies of wind. The pines taught me to talk to myself. In that garden I learnedto send myself off. Later there were no gardens.

  Octavio Paz

  Wall, Garden, Clouds

  Octavio Paz (1979). “A Draft of Shadows, and Other Poems”, p.35, New Directions Publishing

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• Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature - if that word can be used in reference to man, who has ‘invented’ himself by saying ‘no’ to nature - consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude.

  Octavio Paz

  Men, Solitude, Saying No

  The Labyrinth of Solitude ch. 9 (1950) (translation by Lysander Kemp)

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• Drugs are nihilistic: they undermine all values and radically overturn all our ideas about good and evil, what is just and what is unjust, what is permitted and what is forbidden.

  Octavio Paz

  Ideas, Evil, Drug

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.86, Arcade Publishing

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• Ruy-Sanchez's works of fiction are always amazing: adventure, poetry and intelligence in a new geometry of words... His writing has nerve and agility, his intelligence is sharp without being cruel, his mood is sympathetic without complicity.

  Octavio Paz

  Writing, Adventure, Nerves

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• I sat at the foot of a huge tree, a statue of the night, and tried to make an inventory of all I had seen, heard, smelled, and felt: dizziness, horror, stupor, astonishment, joy, enthusiasm, nausea, inescapable attraction. What had attracted me? It was difficult to say: Human kind cannot bear much reality.

  Octavio Paz

  Night, Reality, Names

  "In Light of India".

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• Poets have the gift to speak for others, Vasko Popa had the very rare quality of hearing the others.

  Octavio Paz

  Quality, Hearing, Speak

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• Surrealism is not a school of poetry but a movement of liberation... A way of rediscovering the language of innocence, a renewal of the primordial pact, poetry is the basic text, the foundation of the human order. Surrealism is revolutionary because it is a return to the beginning of all beginnings.

  Octavio Paz

  School, Order, Way

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.50, Arcade Publishing

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• Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.

  Octavio Paz

  Fall, Past, Men

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.48, Arcade Publishing

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• The whole motley confusion of acts, omissions, regrets and hopes which is the life of each one of us finds in death, not meaning or explanation, but an end.

  Octavio Paz

  Regret, Omission, Life And Death

  Octavio Paz (1985). “The Labyrinth of Solitude: And the Other Mexico ; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude ; Mexico and the United States ; The Philanthropic Ogre”, p.54, Grove Press

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• Changes are inseparable from democracy. To defend democracy is to defend the possibility of change; in turn, changes alone can strengthen democracy.

  Octavio Paz

  Possibility Of Change, Justice, Diversity

  Octavio Paz (1985). “One Earth, Four Or Five Worlds: Reflections on Contemporary History”, Harcourt

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• Erotic acts are instinctive; they fulfill a role in nature. The idea is familiar, but it is one that contains a paradox: there is nothing more natural than sexual desire; there is nothing less natural than the forms in which it is made manifest and satisfied.

  Octavio Paz

  Ideas, Erotic, Desire

  Octavio Paz (1998). “An Erotic Beyond: Sade”, Harcourt

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• The value of e-commerce is not in the e, but in the commerce.

  Octavio Paz

  Commerce, E Commerce, Values

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• The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the Press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it he cannot grow or mature.

  Octavio Paz

  Mother, School, Reality

  Octavio Paz (1985). “The Labyrinth of Solitude: And the Other Mexico ; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude ; Mexico and the United States ; The Philanthropic Ogre”, p.25, Grove Press

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• Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

  Octavio Paz

  Criticism, Social, Grammar

  Octavio Paz (1985). “The Labyrinth of Solitude: And the Other Mexico ; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude ; Mexico and the United States ; The Philanthropic Ogre”, p.263, Grove Press

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