Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

My isolation is not a search for happiness, which I do not have the heart to win, nor for peace, which one finds only when it will never more be lost; what I seek is sleep, extinction, a small surrender.

There were people who loved me, There were people I loved. Today I blushed Because of who I once was. I felt ashamed Of being, here and now, The one who always dreams And never steps out, Ashamed of realizing That I can have no more Than this dream of what I could have been - before. 6 August 1934

Heine said that every great tragedy was followed by a general blowing of noses. As a Jew, he saw all too clearly the universal nature of humanity.

All our abstract intelligence is good for is constructing systems, or semi-systematic ideas, which for animals is a simple matter of lying in the sun.

Primeiro estranha-se. Depois entranha-se.

To read is to dream, guided by someone else's hand.

I forget. I don't see. I don't think.

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.

Oh, the continual drunken diversity of flights and departures! Eternal soul of navigators and their navigations!

It could have been any number of things: hardship, grief or simply the suffering born of the indifference that comes from having suffered too much.

My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments with fiddle-strings & harps, drums & tambourines, I sound & clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.

Todo se me evapora. Mi vida entera, mis recuerdos, mi imaginación y lo que contiene, mi personalidad, todo se me evapora. Continuamente siento que he sido otro, que he sentido otro, que he pensado otro. Aquello a lo que asisto es un espectáculo con otro escenario. Y aquello a lo que asisto soy yo

Some people have big dreams in life which they never fulfill. Others don't have any dreams in life, and they don't fulfill those either.

And leaning on the windowsill to enjoy the day, gazing at the variegated mass of the whole city, just one thought fills my soul: that I profoundly wish to die, to cease, to see no more light shining on this city or any city, to think no more, to feel no more, to leave behind the march of time and the sun like a piece of wrapping paper, to remove like a heavy suit – next to the big bed – the involuntary effort of being.

Beside my pain, all other pains seem false or insignificant. They are the pains of happy people or of people who are alive enough to complain. Mine is the pain of someone imprisoned in life, cut off …

Só o que sonhamos é o que verdadeiramente somos, porque o mais, por estar realizado, pertenece ao mundo e a toda a gente

Anything and everything, depending on how one sees it, is a marvel or a hindrance, an all or a nothing, a path or a problem. To see something in constantly new ways is to renew and multiply it. That is why the contemplative person, without ever leaving his village, will nevertheless have the whole universe at his disposal. There's infinity in a cell or a desert. One can sleep cosmically against a rock.

To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarate, and the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning it into a slumber. The other arts make no such retreat – some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.

Les dieux sont ceux qui ne doutent jamais.

I've never aspired to be more than a dreamer. I paid no attention to those who spoke to me of living. I've always belonged to what isn't where I am and to what I could never be. Whatever isn't mine, no matter how base, has always had poetry for me.

Mi-am cucerit, puÅ£in câte puÅ£in, teritoriul interior care urma s? fie al meu. Mi-am cerut, unul dup? altul, întinsurile de mlaÅŸtin? în care nu mai r?m?sese nimic din mine. Åži am scos la iveal? fiinÅ£a mea infinit?, dar a trebuit s? m? scot pe mine din mine cu forcepsul". - Fernando Pessoa, Cartea neliniÅŸtirii

Toda a gente que eu conheço e que fala comigo Nunca teve um ato ridículo, nunca sofreu enxovalho, Nunca foi senão príncipe - todos eles príncipes - na vida...

Anyone who wants to be understood will never know the delight of being understood, because this happens only to the complex and misunderstood; simple souls, the ones whom other people can understand, never feel a desire to be understood.

What once was moral is now, for us, aesthetic … What was social is now individual