The 30 Best Phrases Of Octavio Paz, The Unrepeatable Mexican Poet
A Mexican who transported us to new worlds. The great Octavio Paz (Mexico City 1914 – 1998) was a notable poet writer and thinker who is recognized as one of the best authors of the 20th century.
Born in the midst of the Mexican Revolution, he lived in the United States during his childhood, returning to his native Mexico as a child. He wrote throughout his career, combining works of poetry, prose and translations.
Nonconformist and owner of an incomparable style, Octavio Paz influenced an entire generation of artists and thinkers. This led him to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in the year 1990.
In today’s article we are going to learn about the best thoughts, statements and famous phrases of Octavio Paz.
1. The unreality of what is seen gives reality to the look.
Everything is based on point of view, and knowing how to interpret what we see.
2. Light is the time that is thought.
Extracted from one of his most beautiful poems.
3. A society possessed by the frenzy of producing more to consume more tends to turn ideas, feelings, art, love, friendship and people themselves into objects of consumption.
A criticism of the consumer society and the poverty of art that emanates from it.
4. To love is to get rid of names.
Goodbye labels, welcome love.
5. Everything is today. Everything is present. Everything is, everything is here. But everything is also somewhere else and at another time. Outside of himself and full of himself…
Octavio Paz’s thought always forces us to review our vision of existence.
6. You have to sleep with your eyes open, you have to dream with your hands… you have to dream out loud, you have to sing until the song takes root, trunks, branches, branches, birds, stars…
One of the most famous and remembered verses by Octavio Paz.
7. The protection given to marriage could be justified if society truly allowed choice. Since it does not do so, it must be accepted that marriage does not constitute the highest realization of love, but is a legal, social and economic form that has purposes other than those of love.
Reflecting on love and the culture behind marriage.
8. In sexuality, pleasure serves procreation; In erotic rituals, pleasure is an end in itself or has purposes other than procreation.
One of Octavio Paz’s phrases in which he investigates human sexuality.
9. Love is a feeling that can only be born in the presence of a free being, who can give us or withdraw his presence from us.
Certainly, if love is not in full freedom, it cannot be love.
10. Poetry makes us touch the impalpable and listen to the tide of silence covering a landscape devastated by insomnia.
Another of his literary pearls, in this case with a metaphor only worthy of his magnificent pen.
11. Love: make a soul a body, make a body a soul, make a you a presence.
A nice phrase about love.
12. To love is to fight, to open doors, to stop being a ghost with a number condemned to life by a faceless master.
The transgression linked to love in a society of fools and corrupt.
13. Pride is the vice of the powerful.
What are arrogant people like? We tell you about it in this article.
14. We love a mortal being as if it were immortal.
Feelings can lead us to a terrain of unreason, especially in the field of love.
15. Without freedom, democracy is despotism, without democracy freedom is a chimera.
About the way of governing society.
16. In female relationships, pecking, envy, gossip, jealousy and small perfidies are common. All this is due, almost certainly, not to an innate disability of women but to their social situation.
A criticism of women, but not because they are women but because they have been victims of oppression for centuries.
17. The revolutions of the 20th century were and are, precisely, the seedbed of democracies. They have been a cruel response to Marx’s predictions in history: the revolution that would end the State has not only strengthened it but has created a social group that is, at the same time, its creature and its owner.
A personal vision of the historical events of the last century.
18. Once upon a time, face to face with myself, my face dissolved in front of the mirror: was it my own face, that icy reflection of nothingness?
Who I am? A question that Octavio Paz has asked himself repeatedly.
19. Love is an attraction to a unique person: a body and a soul. Love is choice; eroticism an acceptance.
About eroticism and its conditions.
20. For the Mexican, life is a possibility of screwing or being screwed.
An irreverent phrase to describe class society in Mexico.
21. Man, tree of images, words that are flowers that are fruits that are acts.
Another excerpt from his best poems.
22. Sacrifices and offerings calm or buy gods and patron saints; the gifts and celebrations, to the people.
Panem et circenses, a maxim that Octavio Paz also portrayed.
23. The deep meaning of social protest consists in having opposed the implacable ghost of the future with the spontaneous reality of the now.
A revolutionary phrase that confronts desires and realities.
24. Living well requires dying well. We have to learn to look death in the face.
About facing death with determination and humanity.
25. More difficult than despising money is resisting the temptation to do works or to transform oneself into work.
Reflections on economics and art.
26. None is the absence of our glances, the pause of our conversation, the reticence of our silence.
The pen of Octavio Paz left us absolutely unforgettable verses.
27. Love is born from a crush; the friendship of frequent and prolonged exchange. Love is instant; Friendship takes time.
An excellent reflection on the psychological mechanisms that facilitate different types of relationships between human beings.
28. Our instruments can measure time but we can no longer think about it: it has become too big and too small.
A phrase about time and our battered perception of its passage.
29. In a world made in the image of men, women are only a reflection of masculine will and desire.
A phrase about the machismo prevailing in the West.
30. Awakening to history means becoming aware of our uniqueness, a moment of reflective rest before giving ourselves over to doing.
The reflection that precedes action, to commit ourselves towards an uncertain future.
