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 Copy Share Image
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… — Octavio Paz Copy Share
The religion of art, like the religion of politics, was born from the ruins of Christianity. Art inherited from the old religion the power of consecrating things and endowing them with a sort of eternity; museums are our temples, and the objects displayed in them are beyond history. Politics--or more precisely, Revolution--co-opted the other function of religion: changing human beings… — Octavio Paz Copy Share
I thought that the world was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings. My actions, the cricket's saw, the star's blink,… — Octavio Paz Copy Share Image
Changes are inseparable from democracy. To defend democracy is to defend the possibility of change; in turn, changes alone can strengthen democracy. — Octavio Paz Copy Share Image
It is not proper to project our feelings onto things or to attribute our own sensations and passions to them. Can it also be… — Octavio Paz Copy Share Image
“I went to the little window and inhaled the country air. One could hear the breathing of the night, feminine, enormous. ("The Blue Bouquet")” — Octavio Paz Copy Share Image
A glass pitcher, a wicker basket, a tunic of coarse cloth. Their beauty is inseparable from their function. Handicrafts belong to a world existing… — Octavio Paz Copy Share Image
“Between going and staying the day wavers, in love with its own transparency. The circular afternoon is now a bay where the world in… — Octavio Paz Copy Share Image
“Two bodies face to face Are at times two waves And the night is an ocean. Two bodies face to face Are sometimes two… — Octavio Paz Copy Share Image
