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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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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
Series
Tradition
Longer
Modern
Break
Revolt
Continuity
Sharp
Breaks

More quotes by Octavio Paz

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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.
Octavio Paz
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Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.
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Light is time thinking about itself.
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Love is the revelation of the other person's freedom.
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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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The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
Octavio Paz
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Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.
Octavio Paz
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For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears.
Octavio Paz
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Whatever is not stone is light
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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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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Contemporary man has rationalized the myths, but he has not been able to destroy them.
Octavio Paz
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Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.
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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Changes are inseparable from democracy. To defend democracy is to defend the possibility of change in turn, changes alone can strengthen democracy.
Octavio Paz
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Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
Octavio Paz
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Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.
Octavio Paz
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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.
Octavio Paz
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The world is born when two people kiss
Octavio Paz
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What is art? A violet. Is that all? An artistic style is a living entity, a continuous process of invention. It can never be imposed from without born of the profoundest tendencies within a society, its direction is to a certain extent unpredictable, in much the same way as the eventual configuration of a tree's branches.
Octavio Paz