Source: By the Waters of Babylon (1937)
“I know the mechanism of the trap of morality and the drowsiness of certain words. I have lost faith in all those constructions of stone, ideas, ciphers. I quit. I no longer defend this broken tower. And, in silence, I await the event.”
The Clerk's Vision (1949)
Context: I remember my loves, my conversation, my friendships. I remember it all, see it all, see them all. With melancholy, but without nostalgia. And above all, without hope. I know that it is immortal, and that, if we are anything, we are the hope of something. For me, expectation has spent itself. I quit the nevertheless, the even, the in spite of everything, the moratoriums, the excuses and forgiving. I know the mechanism of the trap of morality and the drowsiness of certain words. I have lost faith in all those constructions of stone, ideas, ciphers. I quit. I no longer defend this broken tower. And, in silence, I await the event.
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Octavio Paz 71
Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Lite… 1914–1998Related quotes
“I do not need to get used to your silence. I already know it. I quite possibly love all of it.”
Ernest Hemingway
(1899–1961) American author and journalist
Source: The Complete Short Stories
Bertrand Russell
(1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 172
1940s
Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things
“Then I lost it. Kinda lost it all, you know. Faith, dignity, about fifteen pounds.”
Nick Hornby
book
High Fidelity
High Fidelity (1995)
“I too await the coming of my hour, I too exist. No. I quit.”
Octavio Paz
(1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature
The Clerk's Vision (1949)
Context: I too await the coming of my hour, I too exist. No. I quit.
Yes, I know, I could settle down in an idea, in a custom, in an obsession. Or stretch out on the coals of a pain or some hope and wait there, not making much noise. Of course it's not so bad: I eat, drink, sleep, make love, observe the marked holidays and go to the beach in summer. People like me and I like them. I take my condition lightly: sickness, insomnia, nightmares, social gatherings, the idea of death, the little worm that burrows into the heart or the liver (the little worm that leaves its eggs in the brain and at night pierces the deepest sleep), the future at the expense of today – the today that never comes on time, that always loses its bets. No. I renounce my ration card, my I. D., my birth certificate, voter's registration, passport, code number, countersign, credentials, safe conduct pass, insignia, tattoo, brand.
“I put my faith in me, and do you know why? Because I have never lost!”
Source: Drenai series, The King Beyond the Gate, Ch. 18
Context: "We don't seem to be overflowing with luck." "You make your own. I put no faith in gods, Lake. Never have. If they exist, they care very little— if at all— about ordinary mortals. I put my faith in me, and do you know why? Because I have never lost!"
“I have lost all faith in the steadfastness of human resolves.”
Charles Brockden Brown
(1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor
Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)
