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
Changes in our aesthetic tastes have no value or meaning in and of themselves; what has value and meaning is the idea of change itself. Or, better stated: not change in and of itself, but change as an agent or inspiration of modern creations.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes that the process of change is more significant than the changes in aesthetic preferences themselves.
Octavio Paz suggests that while changes in our tastes may seem superficial, the concept of change is a powerful force that drives creativity and the evolution of art. He implies that the act of changing, rather than the specific tastes or trends that result, holds intrinsic value and inspires new creations that reflect the modern spirit.
Themes
ChangeAestheticCreationValueInspiration
In practice
Example use cases
In an art class discussion, when debating what drives modern art.
More from Octavio Paz
All quotes →By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death
Octavio PazRead
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.
Octavio PazRead
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
Similar quotes
All forms of beauty, like all possible phenomena, contain an element of the eternal and an element of the transitory - of the absolute and of the particular. Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction creamed from the general surface of different beauties. The particular element in each manifestation comes from the emotions: and just as we have our own particular emotions, so we have our own beauty.
Charles BaudelaireRead
I’ve learned what ‘classical’ means. It means something that sings and dances through sheer joy of existence.
Gustav HolstRead
The word war itself has a kind of glazing abstraction to it that conjures up bombs and bullets and so on, whereas my goal is to try to, so much as I can, capture the heart and the stomach and the back of the throat of readers who can lie in bed at night and participate in a story.
Tim O'BrienRead
I think there's a lot of similarity between what people try to do with religion with what they want from art. In fact, I very specifically think that they are same thing. Not that religion and art are the same, but that they both tap into the same need we have for surrender.
Brian EnoRead
In general, writers shouldn't be killed for what they write, though I can think of exceptions.
Salman RushdieRead
It is the mission of art to remind man from time to time that he is human, and the time is ripe, just now, today, for such a reminder.
Ben ShahnRead