Quote

The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.

Octavio Paz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Possibility
Poetry
Mankind
Wonder
Purpose
Restore

More quotes by Octavio Paz

Image
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.
Octavio Paz
Image
Deserve your dream.
Octavio Paz
Image
Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game.
Octavio Paz
Image
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
Image
Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
Octavio Paz
Image
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
Image
Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down, we don't move today is today, always is today.
Octavio Paz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Loving means getting rid of names.
Octavio Paz
Image
Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.
Octavio Paz
Image
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
Image
Love is the revelation of the other person's freedom.
Octavio Paz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The universe unfolds in the body, which is its mirror and its creature.
Octavio Paz
Image
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
Image
A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
Octavio Paz
Image
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
Octavio Paz
Image
What characterizes a poem is its necessary dependence on words as much as its struggle to transcend them.
Octavio Paz