Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican diplomat, poet and writer, who lived in the 20th century and is regarded as one of the greatest literary figures of the modern era. Paz got acquainted with the giants of literature thanks to his grandfather’s extensive library. His earliest influences include giants of Spanish literature like Juan Roman Jimenez, Gerardo Diego and Antonio Machado. He became a published poet by the time he was a teenager and his first collection of poems titled ‘Wild Moon’ was published when he was only 19 years old. He was also influenced by the great American poet T. S. Elliot and wrote about the hardships of the peasants in Mexico in the poem ‘Between the Stone and The Flower’. Some of his noted poetry collections include ‘Sunstone’, ‘Blanco’, ‘Salamandra’, ‘Vuelta’, ‘Poemas’, ‘Arbol Adentro’, ‘Airborn’ and ‘La Estracion Violenta’ among others. His work has been translated into several languages all over the world. He remains one of the most influential poets in the modern era. Due to his stellar body of work, Paz was awarded the ‘Nobel Prize in Literature’ in 1990 and the ‘Miguel de Cervantes Prize’ in 1981. Below are some of his most well-known and profound quotes and sayings by Octavio Paz which have been excerpted from his books, novels, poems, writings and work. Read on the quotes by Octavio Paz that will keep you high-spirited.
No one behind, no one ahead.
The path the ancients cleared has closed.
And the other path, everyone's path,
easy and wide, goes nowhere.
I am alone and find my way.
...que busca? Tal vez busca su destino. Tal vez su destino es buscar.
...what is he searching for? Perhaps he searches for his destiny. Perhaps his destiny is to search.
When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous. As a result, social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings
Octavio Paz
Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game.
Life is other, always there,
further off, beyond you and
beyond me, always on the horizon,
life which unlives us and makes us strangers,
that invents our face and wears it away
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.
