Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

The supreme empire is that of the Emperor who renounces all normal life, that of other men, and in who the care of supremacy doesn't weigh like a load of jewels.

The world belongs to who doesn't feel. The primary condition to be a practical man is the absence of sensitivity.

There is no safe standard to tell man from animals.

I'm upset by the happiness of all these men who don't know they're unhappy. Because of that, though, I love them all. Dear vegetables!

I'm a man for whom the outside world is an inner Reality.

Action men are the unvoluntary slaves of wise men.

Man shouldn't be able to see his own face. That's what's most terrible. Nature gave him the possibility of not seeing it, as well as the incapacity of not seeing his own eyes.

Ah, what a morning this is, awakening me to life's stupidity. [98 - Zenith trans.]

Nature is the difference between the soul and God.

I was a poet animated by philosophy, not a philosopher with poetic faculties.

The poet is a pretender. / He pretends so completely, / that he even pretends that it is pain / the pain he really feels.

In the very corner of my soul there is an altar to a different god.

In any spirit that isn't deformed there is the belief in God. In any spirit that is not deformed there isn't the belief in a particular God.

God gave the sea the danger and the abyss, but it was in it that He mirrored the sky.

There are those that even God exploits, and they are prophets and saints in the vacuousness of the world.

The rustic, the reader of novels, the pure ascetic: these three are truly happy men

We worship perfection because we can't have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.

The poet is a faker / Who's so good at his act / He even fakes the pain / Of pain he feels in fact.

Direct experience is the evasion, or hiding place of those devoid of imagination.

The value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. That is why there are unforgettable moments and unique people!

I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect

...the painful intensity of my sensations, even when they're happy ones; the blissful intensity of my sensations, even when they're sad.

I realize that, while often happy and often cheerful, I am always sad.

Life is full of paradoxes, as roses are of thorns.