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 modern tradition is the tradition of revolt. The French Revolution is still our model today: history is violent change, and this change goes by the name of progress. I do not know whether these notions really apply to art.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on how history and art are perceived in light of revolutionary change and progress.
Octavio Paz suggests that the essence of modernity is rooted in rebellion and upheaval, epitomized by the French Revolution as a symbol of transformative progress. He questions the connection between the violent changes that drive history and their applicability to the realm of art, suggesting a potential disconnect between societal turmoil and artistic expression.
Themes
RevoltRevolutionProgressChangeArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about social movements, one might quote Paz to emphasize the historical context of change.
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
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
Nelson MandelaRead
Change the story and you change perception; change perception and you change the world.
Jean HoustonRead
People can change their own lives, provided they have the right kind of institutional support. They're not asking for charity, charity is no solution to poverty. Poverty is the creation of opportunities like everybody else has, not the poor people, so bring them to the poor people, so that they can change their lives.
Muhammad YunusRead
Personal, inner change without a change in circumstances and structures is an idealist illusion, as though man were only a soul and not a body as well.
Jurgen MoltmannRead
The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.
Thomas JeffersonRead
The world, as we know it, is coming to an end. The world as the center of the universe, the world divided from the heavens, the world bound by horizons in which love is reserved for members of the in-group: that is the world that is passing away. Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and complacency are coming to an end.
Joseph CampbellRead