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For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears.

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
Every
Men
Extinct
Disappears
Disappear
Image
Becomes
Language

More quotes by Octavio Paz

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Art is what remains of religion: the dance above the yawning abyss.
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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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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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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.
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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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Light is time thinking about itself.
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The universe unfolds in the body, which is its mirror and its creature.
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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.
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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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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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A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
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Death is the mother of forms.
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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.
Octavio Paz
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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.
Octavio Paz
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Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.
Octavio Paz
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Every moment is nothing without end.
Octavio Paz
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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
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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
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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
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There can be no society without poetry, but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic. Sometimes the two terms seek to break apart. They cannot.
Octavio Paz