QuoteProject
I sat at the foot of a huge tree, a statue of the night, and tried to make an inventory of all I had seen, heard, smelled, and felt: dizziness, horror, stupor, astonishment, joy, enthusiasm, nausea, inescapable attraction. What had attracted me? It was difficult to say: Human kind cannot bear much reality.
Octavio Paz
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote reflects on the overwhelming nature of reality and human experience.

In this quote, Octavio Paz contemplates the complexity of human feelings and perceptions while seated at the base of a grand tree. He acknowledges the myriad sensations he has encountered—ranging from joy to horror—and suggests that the intensity of these experiences points to a deeper truth about the human condition: that we often struggle to endure the fullness of reality.

Themes

Human ExperienceRealityPerceptionEmotionsIntrospection

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be referenced during a discussion about the complexity of human emotions.

More from Octavio Paz

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
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

What makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.
Reid HoffmanRead
A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct
Aldo LeopoldRead
Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique.
Henry Louis GatesRead
I knew that was really the only purpose of life: to be our self, live our truth, and be the love that we are.
Anita MoorjaniRead
Madness, mayhem, erotic vandalism, devastation of innumerable souls - while we scream and perish, History licks a finger and turns the page.
Thomas LigottiRead
It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, - superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.
Lucius Annaeus SenecaRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.