Thursday, March 13, 2014

Octavio Paz - Selected Quotes

Octavio Paz (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998)
Miguel de Cervantes Prize, 1981
Nobel Prize in Literature, 1990

“Merece lo que sueƱas.”
(Deserve your dream.)

"Man does not speak because he thinks; he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think."

“Beyond myself, somewhere, I wait for my arrival.”

“To love is to undress our names.”

“A glass pitcher, a wicker basket, a tunic of coarse cotton cloth. Their beauty is inseparable from their function. Handicrafts belong to a world existing before the separation of the useful and the beautiful.”

“Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.”

Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game.”

“The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation; certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the Press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it: he cannot grow or mature.”

"Love is an attempt at penetrating another being, but it can only succeed if the surrender is mutual."

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