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
Erotic acts are instinctive; they fulfill a role in nature. The idea is familiar, but it is one that contains a paradox: there is nothing more natural than sexual desire; there is nothing less natural than the forms in which it is made manifest and satisfied.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The paradox of sexual desire lies in its natural instinct versus the unnatural ways it is expressed.
Octavio Paz explores the inherent contradiction in human sexuality, suggesting that while sexual desire is a fundamental aspect of nature, the societal constructs and forms through which we express that desire are often artificial. This duality highlights a tension between our biological instincts and cultural norms, prompting deeper reflections on the nature of desire and fulfillment.
Themes
Sexual DesireNatureInstinctParadoxExpression
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on human sexuality, this quote can illustrate the complexity of desire.
More from Octavio Paz
All quotes βBy 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
In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.
Anna Brownell JamesonRead
The secret of life is to have no fear; it's the only way to function.
Stokely CarmichaelRead
I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.
Henry David ThoreauRead
At the most we gaze at it in wonder, a kind of wonder which in itself is a form of dawning horror, for somehow we know by instinct that outsize buildings cast the shadow of their own destruction before them, and are designed from the first with an eye to their later existence as ruins.
W. G. SebaldRead
I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.
Chaim PotokRead
We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when weβre faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.
Federico FelliniRead