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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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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
Also
Silence
Nothing
Knowing
Diminishing
Always
Values
Diminished
Times
Inseparable
Language
Publicity
Speak
Meant
Keep
Silent
Two
Value

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A flower without a stem, is beauty waiting to die. A heart without love, is a tear waiting to cry.
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Light is time thinking about itself.
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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.
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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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The universe unfolds in the body, which is its mirror and its creature.
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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.
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To fight evil is to fight ourselves.
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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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For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears.
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Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone.
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Death is the mother of forms.
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To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes to hear it is to see it with our ears.
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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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Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.
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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.
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A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
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The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
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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.
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