Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano; March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. He is considered by many as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets of all time...
NationalityMexican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth31 March 1914
CityMexico City, Mexico
CountryMexico
eye poetry ears
To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.
love-is doors space
Beyond happiness or unhappiness, though it is both things, love is intensity; it does not give us eternity but life, that second in which the doors of time and space open just a crack: here is there and now is always.
love-is names
To love is to undress our names.
self humans human-beings
a human being is never what he is but the self he seeks.
believe book passion
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.
men thinking doe
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.
death civilization ends
A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
creativity trying break
Each time we try to express ourselves we have to break with ourselves.
loneliness being-alone men
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
waiting arrivals
Beyond myself, somewhere, I wait for my arrival.
views civilization differences
What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and pecularities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life
moments ends
Every moment is nothing without end.
love two doors
To love is to battle, to open doors. The world changes if two can look at each other and see.
inspiration men voice
The beloved is already in our being, as thirst and "otherness." Being is eroticism. Inspiration is that strange voice that takes man out of himself to be every thing that he is, everything that he desires; another body, another being. Beyond, outside of me, in the green and gold thicket, among the tremulous branches, sings the unknown. It calls to me.