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Man, Even Man Debased By The Neocapitalism And Pseudosocialism Of Our Time, Is A Marvelous Being Because He Sometimes Speaks. Language Is The Mark, The Sign, Not Of His Fall But Of His Original Innocence. Through The Word We May Regain The Lost Kingdom And Recover Powers We Possessed In The Far-distant Past.

-Octavio Paz

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Man, Even Man Debased

Octavio Paz

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Man, Even Man Debased By The Neocapitalism And Pseudosocialism Of Our Time, Is A Marvelous Being Because He Sometimes Speaks. Language Is The Mark, The Sign, Not Of His Fall But Of His Original Innocence. Through The Word We May Regain The Lost Kingdom And Recover Powers We Possessed In The Far-distant Past.

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No One Behind, No One Ahead. The Path The Ancients Cleared Has Closed. And The Other Path, Everyone's Path, Easy And Wide, Goes Nowhere. I Am Alone And Find My Way.

Solitude Is The Profoundest Fact Of The Human Condition. Man Is The Only Being Who Knows He Is Alone, And The Only One Who Seeks Out Another. His Nature - If That Word Can Be Used In Reference To Man, Who Has ‘invented’ Himself By Saying ‘no’ To Nature - Consists In His Longing To Realize Himself In Another. Man Is Nostalgia And A Search For Communion. Therefore, When He Is Aware Of Himself He Is Aware Of His Lack Of Another, That Is, Of His Solitude.

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Love Is Born At First Sight; The Friendship Of A Frequent And Lengthy Exchange.

To Read A Poem Is To Hear It With Our Eyes; To Hear It Is To See It With Our Ears.

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Erotic Acts Are Instinctive; They Fulfill A Role In Nature. The Idea Is Familiar, But It Is One That Contains A Paradox: There Is Nothing More Natural Than Sexual Desire; There Is Nothing Less Natural Than The Forms In Which It Is Made Manifest And Satisfied.

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Deserve Your Dream.

Loving Means Getting Rid Of Names.

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Because Two Bodies, Naked And Entwined, Leap Over Time, They Are Invulnerable, Nothing Can Touch Them, They Return To The Source. There Is No You, No I, No Tomorrow, No Yesterday, No Names, The Truth Of Two In A Single Body, A Single Soul, Oh Total Being.

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For Every Language That Becomes Extinct, An Image Of Man Disappears.

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Love Is The Revelation Of The Other Person's Freedom.

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Reality Is A Staircase Going Neither Up Nor Down, We Don't Move; Today Is Today, Always Is Today.

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Writers, You Know, Are The Beggars Of Western Society.

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The Universe Unfolds In The Body, Which Is Its Mirror And Its Creature.

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Death Is The Mother Of Forms.

Art Is What Remains Of Religion: The Dance Above The Yawning Abyss.

Solitude Lies At The Lowest Depth Of The Human Condition. Man Is The Only Being Who Feels Himself To Be Alone And The Only One Who Is Searching For The Other.

Man, Even Man Debased By The Neocapitalism And Pseudosocialism Of Our Time, Is A Marvelous Being Because He Sometimes Speaks. Language Is The Mark, The Sign, Not Of His Fall But Of His Original Innocence. Through The Word We May Regain The Lost Kingdom And Recover Powers We Possessed In The Far-distant Past.

To Fight Evil Is To Fight Ourselves.

Power Immobilizes; It Freezes With A Single Gesture-grandiose, Terrible, Theatrical, Or Finally, Simply Monotonous-the Variety Which Is Life.

A Glass Pitcher, A Wicker Basket, A Tunic Of Coarse Cloth. Their Beauty Is Inseparable From Their Function. Handicrafts Belong To A World Existing Before The Separation Of The Useful And The Beautiful.

Love Is Not A Desire For Beauty; It Is A Yearning For Completion.

If Society Abolishes Poetry It Commits Spiritual Suicide.

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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.

Without Democracy Freedom Is A Chimera

Democracy Freedom

Changes Are Inseparable From Democracy. To Defend Democracy Is To Defend The Possibility Of Change; In Turn, Changes Alone Can Strengthen Democracy.

Possibility Of Change

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.

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What Characterizes A Poem Is Its Necessary Dependence On Words As Much As Its Struggle To Transcend Them.

Grace Is Gratuitous; It Is A Gift.

Technology Is Not An Image Of The World But A Way Of Operating On Reality. The Nihilism Of Technology Lies Not Only In The Fact That It Is The Most Perfect Expression Of The Will To Power... But Also In The Fact That It Lacks Meaning.

We Pursue Modernity In Her Incessant Metamorphoses Yet We Never Manage To Trap Her. She Always Escapes: Each Encounter Ends In Flight. We Embrace Her And She Disappears Immediately: It Was Just A Little Air. It Is The Instant, That Bird That Is Everywhere And Nowhere. We Want To Trap It Alive But It Flaps Its Wings And Vanishes In The Form Of A Handful Of Syllables. We Are Left Empty-handed. Then The Doors Of Perception Open Slightly And The Other Time Appears, The Real One We Were Searching For Without Knowing It: The Present, The Presence.

Eroticism Is First And Foremost A Thirst For Otherness. And The Supernatural Is The Supreme Otherness. This Is Perhaps The Most Noble Aim Of Poetry, To Attach Ourselves To The World Around Us, To Turn Desire Into Love, To Embrace, Finally What Always Evades Us, What Is Beyond, But What Is Always There – The Unspoken, The Spirit, The Soul.

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

Love Is An Attempt At Penetrating Another Being, But It Can Only Succeed If The Surrender Is Mutual.

Every View Of The World That Becomes Extinct, Every Culture That Disappears, Diminishes A Possibility Of Life

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