292 Quotes by Octavio Paz

Two opposing forces inhabit the poem: one of elevation or up-rooting, which pulls the word from the language: the other of gravity, which makes it return. The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is also reading and recitation: participation. The poet creates it; the people, by recitation, re-create it. Poet and reader are two moments of a single reality.

The world is born when two people kiss

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

By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death

Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life

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.

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.

Language lies outside of society because it is its foundation; but it also lies within society because that is the only place where it exists and the only place where it develops.

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.