Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

My self-critical mind allows me to see only the defects and faults in my own work, and so I only have the courage to write snippets and snatches, brief notes on the theme of nonexistence, and yet even the little I write is imperfect.

And in the depths of my soul — the only reality of the moment — there is an intense, invisible pain, a sadness like the sound of someone weeping in a dark room.

Saudades, só portugueses Conseguem senti-las bem. Porque têm essa palavra Para dizer que as têm.

We almost always live outside ourselves, and life itself is a continual dispersion. But it's towards ourselves that we tend, as towards a centre around which, like planets, we trace absurd and distant ellipses.

É preciso que todos os que lidam comigo se convençam de que sou assim, e que exigir-me os sentimentos, aliás muito dignos, de um homem vulgar e banal, é como exigir-me que tenha olhos azuis e cabelo louro.

I have all the conditions for happiness, save happiness. The conditions are detached from one another.

There are pigs like me that wallow in their destiny, not drawing away from the banality of daily life because they're enthralled by their own impotence.

Os poetas místicos são filósofos doentes,  E os filósofos são homens doidos.

Não sabíamos que a ordem nas ruas, nas estradas, nas pontes e nas esquadras tinha de ser comprada por tão alto preço - o da venda a retalho da alma portuguesa.

Por qué es bello el arte? Porque es inútil ¿Por qué es tan fea la vida? Porque en ella todo son fines y propósitos. Todos sus caminos conducen de un punto hasta otro punto. ¡ojalá hubiera un camino hecho en un lugar donde nadie parta hacia otro lugar al que nadie va! Quién

Nadie me ofende si me contradice: para una criatura como yo, de opiniones tan poco sólidas, y de sentimientos tan cambiantes, la discrepancia no tiene aquel sentido de agravio que asume para los firmes y para los dogmáticos, porque yo vivo en habitual discordancia conmigo mismo".

There are dreamed anguishes that are more real Than the ones life brings us, there are sensations Felt only by imagining Which are more ours than our own life is. There's so often a thing which, not existing, Does exist, exists lingeringly And lingeringly is ours and us…

Everything belongs to someone else, except the pain of not having it.

But everything is absurd, and dreaming least of all.

What, without madness, is a man More than a beast after feeding, A corpse adjourned, the half-alive breeding?

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.

Agir, eis a inteligência verdadeira. Serei o que quiser. Mas tenho que querer o que for.

May the Gods all preserve for me (until my present form ceases) this clear and sunlit view of external reality, the instinctive awareness of my unimportance, the cosiness of being small, and the solace of being able to imagine myself happy.

A avea cât s? m?nânci ÅŸi s? bei,unde s? locuieÅŸti ÅŸi puÅ£in timp liber ca s? poÅ£i s? visezi,s? scrii sau s? dormi,oare ce aÅŸ putea s? le cer mai mult Zeilor,sau s? sper din partea Destinului?

Whole months have passed during which I haven't lived, but have merely endured, caught between the office and physiology, marooned in an inner stagnation of thinking and feeling. Alas, this is not a restful state to be in, for putrefaction inevitably involves fermentation.

Mankind is a postponed corpse that breeds.

This little boy playing next to me is an intellectual mass of cells - better yet, he's a clockwork of subatomic movements, a strange electrical conglomeration of millions of solar systems in minature. [58, Zenith trans.]

Great mysteries inhabit the threshold of my being.

Wise is the man who monotonizes his existence, for then each minor incident seems a marvel.