Quote

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.

Octavio Paz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Octavio Paz
Age: 84 †
Born: 1914
Born: March 31
Died: 1998
Died: April 2
Diplomat
Essayist
Lyricist
Philosopher
Poet
Politician
Translator
Writer
Mexico City
Mexico
Octavio Paz Lozano
Facts
Human
Profoundest
Humans
Loneliness
Men
Condition
Solitude
Conditions
Alone
Fact

More quotes by Octavio Paz

Image
Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.
Octavio Paz
Image
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
Image
The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
Octavio Paz
Image
A flower without a stem, is beauty waiting to die. A heart without love, is a tear waiting to cry.
Octavio Paz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It is always difficult to give oneself up few persons anywhere ever succeed in doing so, and even fewer transcend the possessive stage to know love for what it actually is: a perpetual discovery, and immersion in the waters of reality, an unending re-creation.
Octavio Paz
Image
Death is the mother of forms.
Octavio Paz
Image
Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down, we don't move today is today, always is today.
Octavio Paz
Image
There can be no society without poetry, but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic. Sometimes the two terms seek to break apart. They cannot.
Octavio Paz
Image
By diminishing the value of silence, publicity has also diminished that of language. The two are inseparable: knowing how to speak has always meant knowing how to keep silent, knowing that there are times when one should say nothing.
Octavio Paz
Image
Solitude lies at the lowest depth of the human condition. Man is the only being who feels himself to be alone and the only one who is searching for the Other.
Octavio Paz
Image
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
Image
Changes are inseparable from democracy. To defend democracy is to defend the possibility of change in turn, changes alone can strengthen democracy.
Octavio Paz
Image
Art is what remains of religion: the dance above the yawning abyss.
Octavio Paz
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.
Octavio Paz
Image
There is nothing sacred or untouchable except the freedom to think. Without criticism, that is to say, without rigor and experimentation, there is no science, without criticism there is no art or literature. I would also say that without criticism there is no healthy society.
Octavio Paz
Image
Poet: gardener of epitaphs.
Octavio Paz
Image
What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.
Octavio Paz
Image
Ruy-Sanchez's works of fiction are always amazing: adventure, poetry and intelligence in a new geometry of words... His writing has nerve and agility, his intelligence is sharp without being cruel, his mood is sympathetic without complicity.
Octavio Paz