Love
is one of the answers humankind invented to stare death in the
face: time ceases to be a measure, and we can briefly know paradise.
Octavio Paz |
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.
Octavio Paz |
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 |
Social
criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
Octavio Paz |
Solitude
is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only
being who knows he is alone.
Octavio Paz |
Surrealism
has been the drunken flame that guides the steps of the sleepwalker
who tiptoes along the edge of the shadow that the blade of the
guillotine casts on the neck of the condemned.
Octavio Paz |
To
read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see
it with our ears.
Octavio Paz |
Wisdom
lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between
the two.
Octavio Paz |
For
he is superstitious grown of late,
Quite from the main opinion he held once
Of fantasy, of dreams, and ceremonies.
Octavio Paz |
Writers,
you know, are the beggars of Western society.
Octavio Paz |