Octavio Paz Quotes

What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and pecularities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life

Fear of difference is fear of life itself.

The only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

I believe the world to be a muffin pan, and there certainly are a lot of muffins here.

Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor.

I think the world is always going to be as diverse as it always has been.

The most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I observe the world, I don't expect to see it just like I was seeing the fellow who lives in the next room.

So much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy, and to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil.

When people say, 'If I had my life over again I wouldn't do anything different,' well, I'd do everything differently just for the variety.

My maw died when I was 20. You tune into the radio or the telly and life goes on. Things keep on happening. The world doesnae stop.

I like change and I like contrast.

The world is looking more and more segmented, the difference between people is becoming greater.

Notre nature est dans le mouvement; le repos entier est la mort. Our nature consists in movement; absolute rest is death.

No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world.

There can be no life without change, and to be afraid of what is different or unfamiliar is to be afraid of life.

World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of things being various.

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

...I have always lived on contrasts! To me the only death is monotony. Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.

A moving shadow means more to us than a body at rest. We are no longer taken in by a fixed grin. We know that only death has a rictus.

Let nothing be changed and all be different.

Where there is no difference, there is only indifference.

Sameness leaves us in peace but it is contradiction that makes us productive.

Death without the possibility of ever changing the world is the same as a life that never was.

In life, no two days are the same for me. It's like a snowflake.