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Octavio Paz Quotes


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Quotes by Octavio Paz

Showing 51-60 of 81 Quotes by Octavio Paz

Despite the often illusory nature of essays on the psychology of a nation, it seems to me there is something revealing in the insistence with which a people will question itself during certain periods of its growth.

~Octavio Paz

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The minority of Mexicans who are aware of their own selves do not make up a closed or unchanging class. They are the only active group, in comparison with the Indian-Spanish inertia of the rest, and ever day they are shaping the country more and more into their own image.

~Octavio Paz

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The object of poetic activity is essentially language: whatever his beliefs and convictions, the poet is more concerned with words than with what these words designate.

~Octavio Paz

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Abstract painting seeks to be a pure pictorial language, and thus attempts to escape the essential impurity of all languages: the recourse to signs or forms that have meanings shared by everyone.

~Octavio Paz

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To the poet fated to be a poet, self-expression is as natural and as involuntary as breathing is to us ordinary mortals.

~Octavio Paz

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In antiquity, a woman might be an object of worship or desire, but never of love.

~Octavio Paz

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To us, the value of a work lies in its newness: the invention of new forms, or a novel combination of old forms, the discovery of unknown worlds or the exploration of unfamiliar areas in worlds already discovered - revelations, surprises.

~Octavio Paz

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The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt. The French Revolution is still our model today: history is violent change, and this change goes by the name of progress. I do not know whether these notions really apply to art.

~Octavio Paz

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Changes in our aesthetic tastes have no value or meaning in and of themselves; what has value and meaning is the idea of change itself. Or, better stated: not change in and of itself, but change as an agent or inspiration of modern creations.

~Octavio Paz

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Art for Duchamp, all the arts, obey the same law: meta-irony is inherent in their very spirit. It is an irony that destroys its own negation and, hence, returns in the affirmative.

~Octavio Paz

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Biography

Nationality: Mexican

Type: Poet

Born: March 31st, 1914

Died: April 19th, 1998

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