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Octavio Paz Quotes


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Quotes by Octavio Paz

Showing 31-40 of 81 Quotes by Octavio Paz

Man, it seems to me, is not in history: he is history.

~Octavio Paz

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The characteristic feature of modernity is criticism: what is new is set over and against what is old, and it is this constant contrast that constitutes the continuity of tradition.

~Octavio Paz

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For the Chinese, the Greeks, the Mayans, or the Egyptians, nature was a living totality, a creative being. For this reason, art, according to Aristotle, is imitation; the poet imitates the creative gesture of nature.

~Octavio Paz

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Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. A constant coming and going: wisdom lies in the momentary.

~Octavio Paz

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Poems - crystallizations of the universal play of analogy, transparent objects which, as they reproduce the mechanism and the rotary motion of analogy, are waterspouts of new analogies.

~Octavio Paz

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Human writing reflects that of the universe; it is its translation, but also its metaphor: it says something totally different, and it says the same thing.

~Octavio Paz

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In each verse, a decision awaits us, and we can't choose to close our eyes and let instinct work on its own. Poetic instinct consists of an alert tension.

~Octavio Paz

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Walt Whitman is the only great modern poet who does not seem to experience discord when he faces his world. Not even solitude - his monologue is a universal chorus.

~Octavio Paz

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In order for sensation to accede to the objectivity of things, it must itself be changed into a thing. The agent of change is language: the sensations are turned into verbal objects.

~Octavio Paz

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Words are things, but things which mean. We cannot do away with meaning without doing away with signs, that is, with language itself. Moreover, we would have to do away with the universe. All the things man touches are impregnated with meaning.

~Octavio Paz

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Biography

Nationality: Mexican

Type: Poet

Born: March 31st, 1914

Died: April 19th, 1998

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