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The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
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
Purpose
Restore
Possibility
Poetry
Mankind
Wonder
More quotes by Octavio Paz
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
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
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.
Octavio Paz
Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.
Octavio Paz
Poet: gardener of epitaphs.
Octavio Paz
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.
Octavio Paz
A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
Octavio Paz
Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.
Octavio Paz
What characterizes a poem is its necessary dependence on words as much as its struggle to transcend them.
Octavio Paz
Love is the revelation of the other person's freedom.
Octavio Paz
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
Octavio Paz
Light is time thinking about itself.
Octavio Paz
Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
Octavio Paz
To love is to battle, to open doors, to cease to be a ghost with a number forever in chains, forever condemned by a faceless master the world changes if two look at each other and see.
Octavio Paz
What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.
Octavio Paz
Changes are inseparable from democracy. To defend democracy is to defend the possibility of change in turn, changes alone can strengthen democracy.
Octavio Paz
Art is what remains of religion: the dance above the yawning abyss.
Octavio Paz
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
The universe unfolds in the body, which is its mirror and its creature.
Octavio Paz
A flower without a stem, is beauty waiting to die. A heart without love, is a tear waiting to cry.
Octavio Paz
