More Quotes by Octavio Paz
By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death
Distraction is our habitual state. Not the distraction of the person who withdraws from the world in order to shut himself up in the secret and ever-changing land of his fantasy, but the distraction of the person who is always outside himself, lost in the trivial, senseless, turmoil of everyday life.
Humankind is never what he is but the self he seeks.
Light is time thinking about itself.
To love is to undress our names.
A flower without a stem, is beauty waiting to die. A heart without love, is a tear waiting to cry.
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.
Each time we try to express ourselves we have to break with ourselves.
The Mexican...is familiar with death. [He] jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love.
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.
