Top 80 Quotes by Octavio Paz

About Octavio Paz

These are some quotes by Mexican author Octavio Paz Poet, who lived between March 31, 1914 and April 19, 1998.

It is not proper to project our feelings onto things or to attribute our own sensations and passions to them. Can it also be improper to see in them a guide, a way of life?

It is not proper to project our feelings onto things or to attribute our own sensations and passions to them. Can it also be improper to see in them a guide, a way of life?

Octavio Paz

Even though the society that Marx foresaw is far from being an historical reality, Marxism has penetrated so deeply in history that we are all Marxists, one way or another, even unknowingly.

Even though the society that Marx foresaw is far from being an historical reality, Marxism has penetrated so deeply in history that we are all Marxists, one way or another, even unknowingly.

Octavio Paz

To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.

To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.

Octavio Paz

When hypocrisy is a character trait, it also affects one's thinking, because it consists in the negation of all the aspects of reality that one finds disagreeable, irrational or repugnant.

When hypocrisy is a character trait, it also affects one's thinking, because it consists in the negation of all the aspects of reality that one finds disagreeable, irrational or repugnant.

Octavio Paz

Little by little, not without astonishment, I rediscovered the great names of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who had been the master thinkers of my grandfather and other Mexican liberals. They did no offer me a doctrine or a catechism: they were and they are a source, an inspiration.

Octavio Paz

It has always surprised me that in a world of relations as hard as that of the United States, cordiality constantly springs out like water from an unstanchable fountain.

It has always surprised me that in a world of relations as hard as that of the United States, cordiality constantly springs out like water from an unstanchable fountain.

Octavio Paz

Any reflection about poetry should begin, or end, with this question: who and how many read poetry books?

Any reflection about poetry should begin, or end, with this question: who and how many read poetry books?

Octavio Paz

Despite the often illusory nature of essays on the psychology of a nation, it seems to me there is something revealing in the insistence with which a people will question itself during certain periods of its growth.

Octavio Paz

We twentieth-century Mexicans, even those of pure Indian descent, look on the pre-Columbian world as a world on the other side, not only distant in time but across the cultural divide.

We twentieth-century Mexicans, even those of pure Indian descent, look on the pre-Columbian world as a world on the other side, not only distant in time but across the cultural divide.

Octavio Paz

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Octavio Paz

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