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"53 Octavio Paz Quotes & Sayings

      Mexican     /     View profile
Born: 31 March 1914. Died: 19 April 1998 | Poet | Diplomat |
Deserve your dream.
Deserve Your Dream
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What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.
Ages Art Criticism Distinguishes
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Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two.

Between Change Dialectic Lies
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Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Begins Criticism Grammar Meanings
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Man does not speak because he thinks; he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think.
Because Different Does He
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Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.
Beggars Know Society Western
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We are condemned to kill time, thus we die bit by bit.

Bit Condemned Die Thus
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To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.

Ears Eyes Hear Our
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Love is an attempt at penetrating another being, but it can only succeed if the surrender is mutual.

Another Attempt Being Love
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The world stretches before me, the vast world of the big, the little, and the medium.

Before Big Little Me
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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.

Above Alone Between Consciousness
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The Mexican succumbs very easily to sentimental effusions, and therefore he shuns them.

Easily He Mexican Sentimental
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When hypocrisy is a character trait, it also affects one's thinking, because it consists in the negation of all the aspects of reality that one finds disagreeable, irrational or repugnant.

Affects Also Aspects Because
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One of the most notable traits of the Mexican's character is his willingness to contemplate horror: he is even familiar and complacent in his dealings with it.

Character Complacent Contemplate Even
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Man, it seems to me, is not in history: he is history.

He History Man Me
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Abstract painting seeks to be a pure pictorial language, and thus attempts to escape the essential impurity of all languages: the recourse to signs or forms that have meanings shared by everyone.

Abstract Attempts Escape Essential
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To the poet fated to be a poet, self-expression is as natural and as involuntary as breathing is to us ordinary mortals.
Breathing Involuntary Mortals Natural
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In antiquity, a woman might be an object of worship or desire, but never of love.

Antiquity Desire Love Might
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The characteristic feature of modernity is criticism: what is new is set over and against what is old, and it is this constant contrast that constitutes the continuity of tradition.

Against Characteristic Constant Continuity
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The idea of modernity is beginning to lose its vitality. It is losing it because modernity is no longer a critical attitude but an accepted, codified convention.

Accepted Attitude Because Beginning
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Futurists wanted to suggest movement by means of a dynamic painting; Duchamp applies the notion of delay - or, rather, or analysis - to movement.

Analysis Delay Dynamic Means
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Yes, I am well aware that nature - or what we call nature: that totality of objects and processes that surrounds us and that alternately creates us and devours us - is neither our accomplice nor our confidant.

Accomplice Am Aware Call
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It is not proper to project our feelings onto things or to attribute our own sensations and passions to them. Can it also be improper to see in them a guide, a way of life?

Also Attribute Feelings Guide
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No one is alone, and each change here brings about another change there.

About Alone Another Brings
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Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. A constant coming and going: wisdom lies in the momentary.

Between Change Coming Constant
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Fixity is always momentary. But how can it always be so? If it were, it would not be momentary - or would not be fixity.
Always How Momentary Were
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Perhaps things are not things but words: metaphors, words for other things.

Metaphors Other Perhaps Things
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Human writing reflects that of the universe; it is its translation, but also its metaphor: it says something totally different, and it says the same thing.

Also Different Human Metaphor
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All poems say the same thing, and each poem is unique. Each part reproduces the others, and each part is different.

Different Each Others Part
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The sound of water is worth more than all the poets' words.

More Poets Sound Than
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In each verse, a decision awaits us, and we can't choose to close our eyes and let instinct work on its own. Poetic instinct consists of an alert tension.
Alert Awaits Choose Close
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Poetry is the experience of liberty. The poet risks himself, chances all on the poem's all with each verse he writes.

Chances Each Experience He
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Walt Whitman is the only great modern poet who does not seem to experience discord when he faces his world. Not even solitude - his monologue is a universal chorus.

Chorus Discord Does Even
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The presence and the present of America are a future; our continent is, by its nature, the land which does not exist on its own, but as something which is created and invented.

America Continent Created Does
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It has always surprised me that in a world of relations as hard as that of the United States, cordiality constantly springs out like water from an unstanchable fountain.

Always Constantly Fountain Hard
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To be a great painter means to be a great poet: someone who transcends the limits of his language.

Great His Language Limits
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Surrealism is not a poetry but a poetics, and even more, and more decisively, a world vision.

Even More MoreAndMore Poetry
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An unread author is an author who is a victim of the worst kind of censorship, indifference - a censorship more effective than the Ecclesiastical Index.

Author Censorship Effective Indifference
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Poetry is not a genre in harmony with the modern world; its innermost nature is hostile or indifferent to the dogmas of modern times, progress and the cult of the future.

Cult Future Genre Harmony
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Poetry, whatever the manifest content of the poem, is always a violation of the rationalism and morality of bourgeois society.

Always Bourgeois Content Manifest
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A society is defined as much by how it comes to terms with its past as by its attitude toward the future: its memories are no less revealing than its aims.

Aims Attitude Defined Future
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The truth is that the history of Mexico is a history in the image of its geography: abrupt and tortuous. Each historical period is like a plateau surrounded by tall mountains and separated from the other plateaus by precipices and divides.

Abrupt Divides Each Geography
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We twentieth-century Mexicans, even those of pure Indian descent, look on the pre-Columbian world as a world on the other side, not only distant in time but across the cultural divide.

Across Cultural Descent Distant
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As it defines itself, every society defines other societies. That definition almost always takes the form of a condemnation: the 'other' is the barbarian.

Almost Always Barbarian Condemnation
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Literatures, like trees and plants, are born of a land and in it flourish and die. But literatures, also like plants, may be carried abroad to take root in a foreign soil.

Abroad Also Born Carried
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Any reflection about poetry should begin, or end, with this question: who and how many read poetry books?
About Any Begin Books
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Even though the society that Marx foresaw is far from being an historical reality, Marxism has penetrated so deeply in history that we are all Marxists, one way or another, even unknowingly.

Another Being Deeply Even
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For a man of my generation, our century has been a long intellectual and political struggle in favor of freedom.

Been Century Favor Freedom
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The work of art is always unfaithful to its creator... Art lays at a higher level; it says something more, and almost always, it says something different from what the artist wanted to say.

Almost Always Art Artist
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I think we all have our own personality, unique and distinctive, and at the same time, I think that our own unique and distinctive personality blends with the wind, with the footsteps in the street, with the noises around the corner, and with the silence of memory, which is the great producer of ghosts.

Around Corner Distinctive Footsteps
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Octavio Paz Quotes & Sayings