Quote

Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.

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
Presences
Resurrection
Poetry
Truth

More quotes by Octavio Paz

Image
Whatever is not stone is light
Octavio Paz
Image
What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.
Octavio Paz
Image
Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.
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
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
Image
The woman who died night after night and her dying was a long goodbye, a train that never left.
Octavio Paz
Image
Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
Octavio Paz
Image
Tradition is no longer a continuity but a series of sharp breaks. The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt.
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
The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
Octavio Paz
Image
Love is the revelation of the other person's freedom.
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
A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
Octavio Paz
Image
What characterizes a poem is its necessary dependence on words as much as its struggle to transcend them.
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
For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears.
Octavio Paz
Image
Every moment is nothing without end.
Octavio Paz
Image
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
Image
Contemporary man has rationalized the myths, but he has not been able to destroy them.
Octavio Paz
Image
To fight evil is to fight ourselves.
Octavio Paz