Tao Te Ching
Octavio Paz
1914 – 1998 CE
Persuasive poet and convincing social commentator
Poet, diplomat, penetrating social commentator, one of the most important 20th century writers, and one of the greatest Hispanic poets; Octavio Paz dissolved his cultural prejudices and became a true world citizen. After traveling extensively in Asia, Europe, and the USA, he became Mexico’s ambassador to India. He criticized his countrymen as “instinctive nihilists who hide behind masks of solitude and ceremoniousness" and resigned from his Mexican diplomatic service when the government massacred students in 1968. Famous for his remarkable poetry that won a Nobel Prize for Literature, he balanced this kind of writing with influential political commentaries in popular magazines he founded.
Eras
Unlisted Sources
Quotes by Octavio Paz (11 quotes)
“Chuang Tzu is not only a remarkable philosopher but also a great poet.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.”
Comments: Click to comment
“To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two.”
Comments: Click to comment
“We all have our own personality, unique and distinctive; and at the same time, this distinctive personality blends with the wind, with the footsteps in the street, with the noises around the corner, and with the silence of memory”
Comments: Click to comment
“The sound of water is worth more than all the poets' words.”
Comments: Click to comment
“A work of literature survives because of translations, interpretations, which are, in fact, resurrections: without them, there would be no work.”
Comments: Click to comment
“The American War of Independence was the expulsion of the intrusive elements, alien to the American essence. If American reality is the reinvention of itself, whatever is found in any way irreducible or unassimilable is not American.”
Comments: Click to comment
“The word for death is not pronounced n New York, in Paris, in London, because it burns the lips. The Mexican, in contrast, is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Contemporary man has rationalized the myths, but he has not been able to destroy them.”
Comments: Click to comment
Comments (0)