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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
Break
Revolt
Continuity
Sharp
Breaks
Series
Tradition
Longer
Modern

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Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.
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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
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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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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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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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For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears.
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The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
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The woman who died night after night and her dying was a long goodbye, a train that never left.
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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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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.
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Every moment is nothing without end.
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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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What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.
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I don't believe that there are dangerous writers: the danger of certain books is not in the books themselves but in the passions of their readers.
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Love is the revelation of the other person's freedom.
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Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
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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.
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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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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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Light is time thinking about itself.
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