Quotessence
Home / Authors / Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllArtPoetryWorldHumansLanguageMenLove IsRealitySolitudeIfs

Famous Octavio Paz Quotes

“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.”

HumansKindStillsRealityJoyNightNamesFeltDifficultHeardTreeFeetHugeBearsHorrorAttractionEnthusiasmSatExcessStatuesAstonishmentInventoryUnrealityBalconiesNausea
Author:Octavio Paz
Create image

“listen to me as one listens to the rain, the years go by, the moments return, do you hear the footsteps in the next room? not here, not there: you hear them in another time that is now, listen to the footsteps of time, inventor of places with no weight, nowhere, listen to the rain running over the terrace, the night is now more night in the grove, lightning has nestled among the leaves, a restless garden adrift-go in, your shadow covers this page.”

YearsMomentsRunningNightNextRoomsReturnPagesShadowRainGardenWeightLightningRestlessInventorFootstepsListen To MeGroveAnother TimeAdriftTerrace
Author:Octavio Paz
Create image

“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.”

IfsKnowsMenHumansFactsUsedRealizingConditionsSolitudeLongingNostalgiaHuman ConditionCommunionAnother ManSaying No
Author:Octavio Paz
Create image

“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”

FirstsLanguageSocialResultsCriticismDecayGrammar
Book:The Labyrinth of Solitude: And the Other Mexico ; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude ; Mexico and the United States ; The Philanthropic Ogre
Create image

“Today we all speak, if not the same tongue, the same universal language. There is no one center, and time has lost its former coherence: East and West, yesterday and tomorrow exist as a confused jumble in each one of us. Different times and different spaces are combined in a here and now that is everywhere at once.”

IfsDifferentTodayLostSpeakLanguageSpaceTomorrowUniversalWestTongueEastYesterdayFormerConfusedHere And NowDifferent TimesCoherenceUniversal LanguageEast And WestYesterday And Tomorrow
Book:Alternating Current
Create image

“Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.”

ThinkingMenReasonModernMirrorsTerrorismWideLikesAwakeTortureNightmareChamberMazesModern ManWide Awake
Book:The Labyrinth of Solitude: And the Other Mexico ; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude ; Mexico and the United States ; The Philanthropic Ogre
Create image

“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.”

MenMaySometimesPastFallLostSpeakLanguageMarkOriginalsKingdomsInnocenceOur TimePossessedMarvelous
Book:Alternating Current
Create image

“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.”

MenWantPersonsRealitySchoolAmericaMotherCertainGrowsProcessChurchPrinciplesWifeChildhoodMen And WomenAspectPressesPlantRadioMatureFormulasSchemesAdaptationSinisterInexorable
Book:The Labyrinth of Solitude: And the Other Mexico ; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude ; Mexico and the United States ; The Philanthropic Ogre
Create image

“What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and pecularities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life”

WorldDifferentLife IsCultureDifferencesViewsProgressPossibilityCivilizationIdealsDisappearAttractionTechniqueFavorsCultDiminishEliminatingUniformityImplicitSuppressingRepulsionAttraction And Repulsion
Author:Octavio Paz
Create image

“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.”

WorldSelfConsciousnessWallDiscoverySelf DiscoveryOpeningRealizationTransparent
Book:The Labyrinth of Solitude: And the Other Mexico ; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude ; Mexico and the United States ; The Philanthropic Ogre
Create image

“We must cultivate and defend particularity, individuality, and irregularity-life. Human beings do not have a future in the collectivism of bureaucratic states or in the mass society created by capitalism. Every system, by virtue as much of its abstract nature as of its pretension to totality, is the enemy of life. As a forgotten Spanish poet, José Moreno Villa, put it with melancholy wit: "I have discovered in symmetry the root of much iniquity."”

LifeHumansStatesHuman BeingsEnemyVirtuePoetMassCapitalismRootsForgottenIndividualityWitAbstractMelancholyTotalityCollectivismPretensionSymmetryIniquityVillaIrregularity
Book:1904-1912
Create image

“It may seem paradoxical to say that we have been expelled from the present, but it is a feeling we have all had at some moment. Some of us experienced it first as a condemnation, later transformed into consciousness and action. The search for the present is neither the pursuit of an earthly paradise nor that of a timeless eternity: it is the search for a real reality.”

FirstsMayHas BeensRealMomentsFeelingsRealitySeemsActionConsciousnessEternityPursuitParadiseTransformedTimelessCondemnationParadoxicalMetamorphosis
Author:Octavio Paz
Create image

“We pursue modernity in her incessant metamorphoses yet we never manage to trap her. She always escapes: each encounter ends in flight. We embrace her and she disappears immediately: it was just a little air. It is the instant, that bird that is everywhere and nowhere. We want to trap it alive but it flaps its wings and vanishes in the form of a handful of syllables. We are left empty-handed. Then the doors of perception open slightly and the other time appears, the real one we were searching for without knowing it: the present, the presence.”

WantLittlesRealEndsActionFormLeftKnowingAliveDoorsAirPerceptionBirdEmptyEmbraceWingsDisappearPursueFlightManageInstantEncountersTrapsHandfulMetamorphosisSyllablesIncessantReal OnesDoors Of Perception
Author:Octavio Paz
Create image