More Quotes by Octavio Paz
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.
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 not a desire for beauty; it is a yearning for completion.
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
Light is time thinking about itself.
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.
To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.
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.
Love is born at first sight; the friendship of a frequent and lengthy exchange.
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.
