By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death
Octavio PazRead
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.
Interpretation
Solitude is a fundamental aspect of being human, and it drives us to seek connection with others.
In this quote, Octavio Paz reflects on the intrinsic nature of solitude in human existence. He suggests that feeling alone is a unique human experience, unlike any other being, and this feeling of isolation compels individuals to seek companionship and understanding from others, highlighting the deep existential quest for connection and meaning in life.
In practice
During a motivational speech about the importance of human connections.
By 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.
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.
I started out thinking of America as highways and state lines. As I got to know it better, I began to think of it as rivers.
In other words: It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not. Or, more bluntly: Wherever I am not is the place where I am myself. Or else, taking the bull by the horns: Anywhere out of the world.
The Lord has given us a table at which to feast, not an altar on which a victim is to be offered; He has not consecrated priests to make sacrifice, but servants to distribute the sacred feast.
Man often becomes what he believes himself to be.
Worry implies that we don't quite trust God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what's happening in our lives.
It is the task of theologians to establish the limits of justice and injustice regarding the intrinsic goodness or wickedness of an act; it is the task of the observer of public life to establish the relationships of political justice and injustice, that is, of what is useful or harmful to society.
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