Quote

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

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
Doors
Condemned
Open
Chains
Forever
Ghost
Two
Cease
Look
Master
Looks
Changes
Love
Battle
World
Number
Faceless

More quotes by 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
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
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
Octavio Paz
Image
Enormous and solid but swaying, beaten by the wind but chained, murmur of a million leaves against my window. Riot of trees, surge of dark green sounds. The grove, suddenly still, is a web of fronds and branches.
Octavio Paz
Image
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.
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
Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down, we don't move today is today, always is today.
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
To fight evil is to fight ourselves.
Octavio Paz
Image
What characterizes a poem is its necessary dependence on words as much as its struggle to transcend them.
Octavio Paz
Image
Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.
Octavio Paz
Image
To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes to hear it is to see it with our ears.
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
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
Every moment is nothing without end.
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
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?
Octavio Paz
Image
Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
Octavio Paz
Image
The woman who died night after night and her dying was a long goodbye, a train that never left.
Octavio Paz
Image
The world is born when two people kiss
Octavio Paz