Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Octavio Paz (Mexican Poet, Diplomat)

Octavio Paz (1914–98) was a Mexican poet, essayist, editor, and diplomat. One of the prominent Latin American writers of the 20th century, he received the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Mexican to win a Nobel.

Born in Mexico City, Paz was introduced to literature at his grandfather’s library, which was filled with classic Mexican and European literature. After studying law and literature at the National University of Mexico, he identified with the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. He endorsed Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba. He joined the Mexican diplomatic service in 1943 and served in Europe and the United States. He was the Mexican ambassador to India, 1962–68.

Paz was inspired by Marxism, Surrealism, existentialism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. He is best known for his poetry, such as Piedra de sol (1957; Sun Stone, 1963,) written in ten volumes.

Paz’s other works include a study of Mexican character and culture, El Iaberinto de la Soledad (1950; revised 1959; The Labyrinth of Solitude, 1962;) Postdata (1970; The Other Mexico: Critique of the Pyramid, 1972,) written after the student massacre and other events in 1968; El area y la lira (1956; The Bow and the Lyre, 1973,) and Vislumbres de la India (1995, ‘Glimpses of India.’)

Paz’s Obras completas de Octavio Paz (15 vols, “Complete Works of Octavio Paz”) was issued 1994–2004. His English translation anthology is Poems of Octavio Paz (2012.)

University of Oklahoma’s Ivar Ivask wrote The Perpetual Present: The Poetry and Prose of Octavio Paz (1973.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Octavio Paz

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
Octavio Paz
Topics: Critics, Criticism

Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.
Octavio Paz
Topics: Thought, Thoughts, Thinking

What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.
Octavio Paz
Topics: Art, Arts, Criticism, Artists

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.
Octavio Paz
Topics: Speech, Conversation

Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers…. What we call art is a game.
Octavio Paz
Topics: Beauty

Today we all speak, if not the same tongue, the same universal language. There is no one center, and time has lost its former coherence: East and West, yesterday and tomorrow exist as a confused jumble in each one of us. Different times and different spaces are combined in a here and now that is everywhere at once.
Octavio Paz

If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.
Octavio Paz
Topics: Relationships

Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life.
Octavio Paz
Topics: Culture

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two.
Octavio Paz
Topics: Change

Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down, we don’t move; today is today, always is today.
Octavio Paz
Topics: Time Management

We are condemned to kill time, thus we die bit by bit.
Octavio Paz
Topics: Time Management, Time, Waste

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
Octavio Paz
Topics: Loneliness, Solitude

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

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.
Octavio Paz
Topics: Technology

Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.
Octavio Paz
Topics: Books, Literature

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