Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

What is there to confess that's worthwhile or useful? What has happened to us has happened to everyone or only to us; if to everyone, then it's no novelty, and if only to us, then it won't be understood. If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant

I do not evolve, I simply journey.

Sit under the sun abdicate and be your own king

Peki, kim kurtaracak beni var olmaktan?

Amar é a eterna inocência, E a única inocência não pensar...

O meu misticismo é não querer saber. É viver e não pensar nisso.

Tanto tenho vivido sem ter vivido! Tanto tenho pensado sem ter pensado! Pesam sobre mim mundos de violências paradas, de aventuras tidas sem movimento. Estou farto do que nunca tive nem terei, tediento de deuses por existir. Trago comigo as feridas de todas as batalhas que evitei… Em mim o que há de primordial é o hábito e o jeito de sonhar.

No-one loves another More than he loves whatever another within may have That is part of one's self

A vida é a hesitação entre uma exclamação e uma interrogação. Na dúvida, há um ponto final.

I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing; it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will's surrender. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.

Our problem isn't that we're individualists. It's that our individualism is static rather than dynamic. We value what we think rather than what we do. We forget that we haven't done, or been, what we thought; that the first function of life is action, just as the first property of things is motion.

At the end of this day there remains what remained yesterday and what will remain tomorrow: the insatiable, unquantifiable longing to be both the same and other.

I created myself, echo and abyss, by thinking. I multiplied myself by going deeply into myself...

12. Se escrevo o que sinto é porque assim diminuo a febre de sentir. O que confesso não tem importância, pois nada tem importância Por: Bernado Soares In: Livro do Desassossego

Isto está tudo decadente: já nem decadentes há.

Let others take up my madness And all that went with it. Without madness what is man But a healthy beast, A postponed corpse that breeds?

I have to choose what I detest – either dreaming, which my intelligence hates, or action, which my sensibility loathes; either action, for which I wasn't born, or dreaming, for which no one was born. Detesting both, I choose neither; but since I must on occasion either dream or act, I mix the two things together.

But oh how many Caesars I have been!

My worthless self lives on at the bottom of every expression, like an indissoluble residue at the bottom of a glass from which only water was drunk.

What happens to us either happens to everyone or only to us: in the first instance it's banal; in the second it's incomprehensible.

All effort is pointless, but it passes the time. Reasoning is sterile, but amusing. Loving is tedious, but possibly preferable to not loving.

No hay mayor tragedia que tener la misma intensidad, en una misma alma o en un hombre, del sentimiento intelectual y del sentimiento moral. Para que un hombre pueda ser distintiva y absolutamente moral, tiene que ser un poco estúpido. Para que un hombre pueda ser absolutamente intelectual, tiene que ser un poco inmoral. No sé qué juego o ironía de las cosas condena al hombre a la imposibilidad de que se dé esta dualidad tan grande.

O único sentido íntimo das cousas É elas não terem sentido íntimo nenhum.  

Ich bin der Zwischenraum zwischen dem, was ich bin, und dem, was ich nicht bin, zwischen dem, was ich träume, und dem, was das Leben aus mir gemacht hat, der abstrakte und leibliche Mittelwert zwischen Dingen, die nichts sind, da ich ebenfalls nichts bin. Welche Unruhe, wenn ich fühle, welch Unbehagen, wenn ich denke, welche Nutzlosigkeit, wenn ich will!