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
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
ModernityVitalityConventionCritical ThinkingChange
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
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
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