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Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.

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
Writers
Society
Writing
Beggars
Beggar
Western

More quotes by Octavio Paz

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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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The world is born when two people kiss
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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.
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Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
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Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.
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Light is time thinking about itself.
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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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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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Poet: gardener of epitaphs.
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Every moment is nothing without end.
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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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The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
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Contemporary man has rationalized the myths, but he has not been able to destroy them.
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Love is the revelation of the other person's freedom.
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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.
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Man does not speak because he thinks he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think.
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What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.
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Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down, we don't move today is today, always is today.
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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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Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone.
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