Solitude lies at the lowest depth of the human condition. Man is the only being who feels himself to be alone and the only one who is searching for the Other.
Octavio PazRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the interconnectedness of humanity and the fluidity of time and place in our shared experiences.
Octavio Paz reflects on the idea that despite our different backgrounds and languages, we share a universal language that transcends borders and time. He suggests that traditional concepts of time and space have blended together, creating a collective human experience where the past, present, and future coexist within each individual, highlighting our shared existence in a complex and interconnected world.
Themes
Universal LanguageInterconnectednessTimeSpaceHuman Experience
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about globalization and cultural exchange.
More from Octavio Paz
All quotes →By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death
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The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the Press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it he cannot grow or mature.
Octavio PazRead
Poetry is not a genre in harmony with the modern world; its innermost nature is hostile or indifferent to the dogmas of modern times, progress and the cult of the future.
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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 PazRead
Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.
Octavio PazRead
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