Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down, we don't move; today is today, always is today. Octavio Paz More Quotes by Octavio Paz More Quotes From Octavio Paz The woman who died night after night Octavio Paz goodbyenightlong Images, memories, fragmentary shapes and forms all those sensations, visions, half-thoughts that appear and disappear in the wink of an eye, as one sets forth to meet.... The path also disappears as I think of it, as I say it. Octavio Paz eyememoriesthinking Art is what remains of religion: the dance above the yawning abyss. Octavio Paz abyssyawningart 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-changediversityjustice 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 wallselfdiscovery Revolt is the violence of an entire people; rebellion the unruliness of an individual or an uprising by a minority; both are spontaneous and blind. Revolution is both planned and spontaneous, a science and an art. Octavio Paz uprisingpeopleart It is the Revolution, the magical word, the word that is going to change everything, that is going to bring us immense delight and a quick death. Octavio Paz quick-deathdelightrevolution Solitude is the profoundest fact Octavio Paz solitudefacts A glass pitcher, a wicker basket, a tunic of coarse cloth. Their beauty is inseparable from their function. Handicrafts belong to a world existing before the separation of the useful and the beautiful. Octavio Paz glassesbeautifulworld 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 menpastfall 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 namesnightreality Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration. Octavio Paz analysiscriticismreal 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 orderwayschool What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions; life is plurality, death is uniformity. Octavio Paz differenceslifeworld What is art? A violet. Is that all? An artistic style is a living entity, a continuous process of invention. It can never be imposed from without; born of the profoundest tendencies within a society, its direction is to a certain extent unpredictable, in much the same way as the eventual configuration of a tree's branches. Octavio Paz styletreeart Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society. Octavio Paz beggarwesternwriting The religion of art, like the religion of politics, was born from the ruins of Christianity. Art inherited from the old religion the power of consecrating things and endowing them with a sort of eternity; museums are our temples, and the objects displayed in them are beyond history. Politics--or more precisely, Revolution--co-opted the other function of religion: changing human beings and society. Art was an asceticism, a spiritual heroism; Revolution was the construction of a universal church. Octavio Paz spiritualmuseumsart 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 drugevilideas Language lies outside of society because it is its foundation; but it also lies within society because that is the only place where it exists and the only place where it develops. Octavio Paz foundationlanguagelying 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 life-and-deathomissionregret
