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Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Octavio Paz

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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
Establishing
Meanings
Grammar
Begins
Critics
Criticism
Social

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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.
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The woman who died night after night and her dying was a long goodbye, a train that never left.
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Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.
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Tradition is no longer a continuity but a series of sharp breaks. The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt.
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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.
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Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.
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When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous. As a result, social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings
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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.
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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.
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Contemporary man has rationalized the myths, but he has not been able to destroy them.
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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.
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A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
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Watching I watch myself, what I see is my creation as though entering through my eyes perception is conception into an eye more crystal clear water of thoughts, what I watch watches me, I am the creation of what I see
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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.
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Eroticism is first and foremost a thirst for otherness. And the supernatural is the supreme otherness. This is perhaps the most noble aim of poetry, to attach ourselves to the world around us, to turn desire into love, to embrace, finally what always evades us, what is beyond, but what is always there – the unspoken, the spirit, the soul.
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The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
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Deserve your dream.
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For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears.
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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.
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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.
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