#Quote
More Quotes by Octavio Paz
Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life
Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone.
Love is born at first sight; the friendship of a frequent and lengthy exchange.
A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
The universe unfolds in the body, which is its mirror and its creature.
We must cultivate and defend particularity, individuality, and irregularity-life. Human beings do not have a future in the collectivism of bureaucratic states or in the mass society created by capitalism. Every system, by virtue as much of its abstract nature as of its pretension to totality, is the enemy of life. As a forgotten Spanish poet, José Moreno Villa, put it with melancholy wit: "I have discovered in symmetry the root of much iniquity."
Believing ourselves to be possessors of absolute truth degrades us: we regard every person whose way of thinking is different from ours as a monster and a threat and by so doing turn our own selves into monsters and threats to our fellows.
To love is to battle, to open doors, to cease to be a ghost with a number forever in chains, forever condemned by a faceless master; the world changes if two look at each other and see.
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.
For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears.