What characterizes a poem is its necessary dependence on words as much as its struggle to transcend them. Octavio Paz More Quotes by Octavio Paz More Quotes From Octavio Paz The Mexican...is familiar with death. [He] jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love. Octavio Paz mexican toys sleep 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 Octavio Paz differences views civilization Beyond myself, somewhere, I wait for my arrival. Octavio Paz arrivals waiting The supreme value is not the future but the present. The future is a deceitful time that always says to us, 'Not Yet,' and thus denies us... Whoever builds a house for future happiness builds a prison for the present. Octavio Paz future-happiness prison house Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone. Octavio Paz being-alone loneliness men To love is to battle, to open doors, to cease to be a ghost with a number forever in chains, forever condemned by a faceless master; the world changes if two look at each other and see. Octavio Paz doors love two A flower without a stem, is beauty waiting to die. A heart without love, is a tear waiting to cry. Octavio Paz flower heart love-is The American: a titan enamored of progress, a fanatical giant who worships "getting things done" but never asks himself what he is doing nor why he is doing it. Octavio Paz progress giants done Deserve your dream. Octavio Paz your-dreams deserve dream Believing ourselves to be possessors of absolute truth degrades us: we regard every person whose way of thinking is different from ours as a monster and a threat and by so doing turn our own selves into monsters and threats to our fellows. Octavio Paz truth believe thinking Love is not a desire for beauty; it is a yearning for completion. Octavio Paz yearning desire love-is By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death Octavio Paz progress differences civilization Light is time thinking about itself. Octavio Paz light thinking A civilization that denies death ends by denying life. Octavio Paz deny civilization death 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." Octavio Paz individuality roots life Every moment is nothing without end. Octavio Paz moments ends To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears. Octavio Paz poetry eye ears 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. Octavio Paz real air doors Love is an attempt at penetrating another being, but it can only succeed if the surrender is mutual. Octavio Paz mutual-help success love Whatever is not stone is light Octavio Paz mexican poetry light
