"Solitude—the feeling and knowledge that one is alone, alienated from the world and oneself—is not an exclusively Mexican characteristic. All men, at some moment in their lives, find themselves to be alone. And they are. To live is to be separated from what we were in order to approach what we are going to be in the mysterious future. Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature—if that word can be used in reference to man, who has "invented" himself by saying "No" to nature—consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude (El Laberinto de la Soledad, 1950), trans. Lysander Kemp (New York: Grove Press, 1961), p. 195
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Solitude
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Solitude
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