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.
The idea of modernity is beginning to lose its vitality. It is losing it because modernity is no longer a critical attitude but an accepted, codified convention.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Modernity is becoming less dynamic and more conventional, as it shifts from critical thought to mere acceptance.
In this quote, Octavio Paz reflects on the evolving concept of modernity, suggesting that it has transitioned from being an innovative and critical perspective to a standardized and widely accepted convention. This shift results in a loss of vitality and engagement with modernity, hindering its potential to inspire change and provoke thought. By highlighting this decline, Paz calls for a return to a more critical and dynamic approach to modernity, emphasizing the importance of questioning established norms.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about contemporary art, one might use this quote to discuss the stagnation in artistic movements.
More from Octavio Paz
All quotes βBy suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death
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.
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.
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.
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.
Similar quotes
We are 6.6 billion people now. We can only feed 4 billion. I don't see 2 billion volunteers to disappear.
Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle.
The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong!
In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that's on it is a mental construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms. It is an indoor philosophy.
It seems as if, for every dragon head that is lopped off, two more terrible appear. Seems so. But in truth, Life is gaining all the while. Brute force, such power as there seems to be in things, cannot stand against ideas which are eternal.