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Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down, we don't move today is today, always is today.

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
History
Reality
Today
Going
Staircase
Always
Staircases
Neither
Move
Moving

More quotes by Octavio Paz

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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.
Octavio Paz
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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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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
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A flower without a stem, is beauty waiting to die. A heart without love, is a tear waiting to cry.
Octavio Paz
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Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.
Octavio Paz
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Ruy-Sanchez's works of fiction are always amazing: adventure, poetry and intelligence in a new geometry of words... His writing has nerve and agility, his intelligence is sharp without being cruel, his mood is sympathetic without complicity.
Octavio Paz
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The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
Octavio Paz
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Deserve your dream.
Octavio Paz
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The woman who died night after night and her dying was a long goodbye, a train that never left.
Octavio Paz
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Art is what remains of religion: the dance above the yawning abyss.
Octavio Paz
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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.
Octavio Paz
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Tradition is no longer a continuity but a series of sharp breaks. The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt.
Octavio Paz
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Solitude is the profoundest fact
Octavio Paz
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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?
Octavio Paz
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To fight evil is to fight ourselves.
Octavio Paz
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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.
Octavio Paz
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Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
Octavio Paz
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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.
Octavio Paz
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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.
Octavio Paz
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A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
Octavio Paz