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Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone.

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
Realization
Discovery
Alone
Self

More quotes by Octavio Paz

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A flower without a stem, is beauty waiting to die. A heart without love, is a tear waiting to cry.
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I thought that the world was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings. My actions, the cricket's saw, the star's blink, were nothing but pauses and syllables, scattered phrases from that dialogue. What word could it be, of which I was only a syllable? Who speaks the word? To whom is it spoken?
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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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Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.
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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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The universe unfolds in the body, which is its mirror and its creature.
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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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A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
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Art is what remains of religion: the dance above the yawning abyss.
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The world is born when two people kiss
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Love is the revelation of the other person's freedom.
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Changes are inseparable from democracy. To defend democracy is to defend the possibility of change in turn, changes alone can strengthen democracy.
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What characterizes a poem is its necessary dependence on words as much as its struggle to transcend them.
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Every moment is nothing without end.
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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.
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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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Contemporary man has rationalized the myths, but he has not been able to destroy them.
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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
Octavio Paz
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Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
Octavio Paz