More Quotes by Octavio Paz
The American: a titan enamored of progress, a fanatical giant who worships "getting things done" but never asks himself what he is doing nor why he is doing it.
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.
Humankind is never what he is but the self he seeks.
The supreme value is not the future but the present. The future is a deceitful time that always says to us, 'Not Yet,' and thus denies us... Whoever builds a house for future happiness builds a prison for the present.
Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.
To love is to undress our names.
Every moment is nothing without end.
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 born at first sight; the friendship of a frequent and lengthy exchange.
There is nothing sacred or untouchable except the freedom to think. Without criticism, that is to say, without rigor and experimentation, there is no science, without criticism there is no art or literature. I would also say that without criticism there is no healthy society.
