Quotes from Octavio Paz

I do not condemn the cult of pleasure; I lament the general vulgarity.

Death and birth are solitary experiences. We are born alone and we die alone. When we are expelled from the maternal womb, we begin the painful struggle that finally ends in death.

El amor no es eternidad; tampoco es el tiempo sucesivo...Es la percepción instantánea de todos los tiempos en uno solo, de todas las vidas en un instante. ¿Qué ve la pareja, en el espacio de un parpadeo? La identidad de la aparición y la desaparición, la verdad del cuerpo y del no-cuerpo, la visión de la presencia que se disuelve en un esplendor; vivacidad pura, latido del tiempo.

A saint speaks with God or with himself, two forms of silence.

Hay 3 clases de amistad: por interés o utilidad, por placer y la amistad perfecta, la de los hombres de bien y semejantes en virtud, porque éstos se desean igualmente el bien.

Perhaps to love is to learn to walk through this world. To learn to be silent Like the oak and linden of fable. To learn to see

Desire turns us into ghosts

Mi corazón está brotando flores en mitad de la noche Poema Azteca

Two Bodies Two bodies face to face are at times two waves and night is an ocean. Two bodies face to face are at times two stones and night a desert. Two bodies face to face are at times two roots laced into night. Two bodies face to face are at times two knives and night strikes sparks. Two bodies face to face are two stars falling in an empty sky.

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition.

La mucha luz es como la mucha sombra: no deja ver.

Love is an attempt to penetrate another being, but it can only be realized if the surrender is mutual. It is always difficult to give oneself up; few persons anywhere ever succeed in doing so, and even fewer transcend the possessive stage to know love for what it actually is: a perpetual discovery, an immersion in the waters of reality and an unending re-creation.

I am where I was: I walk behind the murmur, footsteps within me, heard with my eyes, the murmur is in the mind, I am my footsteps, I hear the voices that I think, the voices that think me as as I think them. I am the shadow my words cast. from Draft of Shadows

La elección y la exclusividad son condiciones que la amistad comparte con el amor. La amistad nace de la comunidad y de la coincidencia en las ideas, en los sentimientos o en los intereses. El amor nace de un flechazo; la amistad es el intercambio frecuente y prolongado. El amor es instantáneo; la amistad requiere tiempo.

Light is time reflecting on time.

El amor es trágico; añado que la amistad es una respuesta a la tragedia.

El amor es una pasión que todos o casi todos veneran pero que pocos, muy pocos viven realmente.

The blue light of the rising moon fell on the rocks and the scant forest of the taiga, revealing each projecting rock, each tree in a peculiar fashion, different from the way they looked by day. Everything seemed real but different than in the daytime. It was as if the world had a second face, a nocturnal face.

I went to the little window and inhaled the country air. One could hear the breathing of the night, feminine, enormous.

Tell me how you die and I will tell you who you are.

Art is the opposite of dissipation, in the physical and spiritual sense of the word: it is concentration, desire that seeks incarnation.

Debe abrirse a la muerte y a la nostalgia del limbo,del mundo animal. Debe abrirse a la muerte si quiere abrirse a la vida; entonces será como los ángeles¨.

There can be no society without poetry, but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic. Sometimes the two terms seek to break apart. They cannot.

Ciertas noches su piel se cubría de fosforescencias y abrazarla era abrazar un pedazo de noche tatuado de fuego.