More Quotes by Octavio Paz
Humankind is never what he is but the self he seeks.
Beyond myself, somewhere, I wait for my arrival.
It is always difficult to give oneself up; few persons anywhere ever succeed in doing so, and even fewer transcend the possessive stage to know love for what it actually is: a perpetual discovery, and immersion in the waters of reality, an unending re-creation.
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.
The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone.
To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.
To love is to undress our names.
A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
The beloved is already in our being, as thirst and "otherness." Being is eroticism. Inspiration is that strange voice that takes man out of himself to be every thing that he is, everything that he desires; another body, another being. Beyond, outside of me, in the green and gold thicket, among the tremulous branches, sings the unknown. It calls to me.
