#Quote
More Quotes by Octavio Paz
Love is born at first sight; the friendship of a frequent and lengthy exchange.
Love is the revelation of the other person's freedom.
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.
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."
For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears.
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.
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
A flower without a stem, is beauty waiting to die. A heart without love, is a tear waiting to cry.
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.
