Octavio Paz Quotes
Octavio Paz was a Mexican poet, essayist, and diplomat and one of the foremost Latin American writers of the twentieth century. His Labyrinth of Solitude, published in 1950, conducted a sustained meditation on Mexican identity and modernity that has shaped subsequent Latin American thought. The quotes below are attributed to Octavio Paz, organized by topic.
Browse Octavio Paz by topic
Octavio Paz on Knowledge
-
“Merece lo que sueñas.”
Deserve your dream . "Hacia el Poema (Puntos de Partida)" [Toward the Poem (Starting Points)] (1950) | Variant translation: Deserve what you dream. -
“Variant translation: Deserve what you dream.”
Merece lo que sueñas. -
“There can be no society without poetry , but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic. Sometimes the two terms seek to break apart. They cannot.”
Signs in Rotation" (1967) in The Bow and the Lyre : The Poem, The Poetic Revelation, Poetry and History (1973) as translated by Ruth L.C. Simms, p. 249 -
“Nobel Lecture (8 December 1990)”
Only now have I understood that there was a secret relationship between what I have called my expulsion from the present and the writing of poetry . Poetry is in love with the instant and seeks to relive it in the poem, thus separating it from sequential time and turning it into a fixed present. But at that time I wrote without wondering why I was doing it. I was searching for the gateway to the p -
“To fight evil is to fight ourselves.”
Itinerary (1994) -
“If you are the amber mare”
Wikiquote -
“Motion", as translated by Eliot Weinberger, in Collected Poems 1957-1987”
Wikiquote -
“Between going and staying the day wavers,”
Wikiquote
Octavio Paz on Life
-
Attributed to Octavio Paz:
“Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition.”
-
“Death is a mirror which reflects the vain gesticulations of the living. The whole motley confusion of acts, occasions, regrets and hopes which is the life of each one of us finds in death, not meaning or explanation, but an end.”
The Labyrinth of Solitude(1950) | Ch. 3: "The Day of the Dead", p. 54
Octavio Paz on Love
-
Attributed to Octavio Paz:
“Love is the secret religion of those who have not lost faith in being.”
Octavio Paz on Mind
-
“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.”
Alternating Current(1967) | André Breton or the Quest of the Beginning -
“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 .”
The Labyrinth of Solitude(1950) | Ch. 9: "The Dialectic of Solitude", p. 212 -
“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.”
The Monkey Grammarian(1974) | Ch. 1
Octavio Paz on Nature
-
“willow of crystal, a poplar of water, a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over, tree that is firmly rooted and that dances, turning course of a river that goes curving, advances and retreats, goes roundabout, arriving forever:”
Sun Stone (1957)
Octavio Paz on Politics
-
Attributed to Octavio Paz:
“Modernity began as a critique of religion, philosophy, morality, law, history, economics, and politics.”
Octavio Paz on Time
-
“Only now have I understood that there was a secret relationship between what I have called my expulsion from the present and the writing of poetry . Poetry is in love with the instant and seeks to relive it in the poem, thus separating it from sequential time and turning it into a fixed present. But at that time I wrote without wondering why I was doing it. I was searching for the gateway to the present: I wanted to belong to my time and to my century. A little later this obsession became a fixed idea: I wanted to be a modern poet. My search for modernity had begun.”
Nobel Lecture (8 December 1990)
Octavio Paz on Truth
-
“Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two.”
Ch. 2
Octavio Paz on Virtue
-
“Deserve your dream.”
Merece lo que sueñas. -
“If we are a metaphor of the universe , the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.”
Alternating Current(1967) | André Breton or the Quest of the Beginning