Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

I'm nothing. I'll always be nothing. I can't want to be something. But I have in me all the dreams of the world.

Lezten Endes bleibt von diesem Tage das, was vom gestrigen blieb und vom morgigen bleiben wird: die unersättliche und nicht zählbare Begierde, immer derselbe und ein anderer zu sein.

Does the peace I feel when I see you belong to you or to me?

On the other side sit we — the errand boy from around the corner, the unruly playwright William Shakespeare, the barber who tells stories, the schoolmaster John Milton, the shop assistant, the vagabond Dante Alighieri, those whom death either forgets or consecrates and whom life forgot and never consecrated.

I don't remember my mother. She died when I was one year old. My distracted and callous sensibility comes from the lack of that warmth and from my useless longing after kisses I don't remember.

Organizar em perfeito paralelismo a minha vida prática e a minha vida especulativa, de modo a que a primeira nunca possa prejudicar a segunda, à qual está, por um dever mais alto, subordinada.

We feel the weather even when we are unaware that we do.

I am no pessimist. Happy are those who can make of their suffering something universal. I don't know if the world is sad or bad, nor do I care, because I feel bored and indifferent in the face of other people's suffering. As long as they don't cry or moan — which I find irritating and embarrassing —I greet their suffering with a shrug of the shoulders, so deep is my disdain for them.

As bolas de sabão que esta criança Se entretém a largar de uma palhinha São translucidamente uma filosofia toda.

Sou místico, mas só com o corpo. A minha alma é simples e não pensa.

We all love each other, and the lie is the kiss we exchange.

I have an anguished, painful need to speak with you.

The nobleman thinks clearly, writes clearly, and controls his emotions, though not his feelings; the bookkeeper controls neither emotions nor feelings, and what he thinks depends on what he feels.

Yes it's me, I myself, what I turned out to be, (…) I'm the one here in myself, it's me. (…) Whatever I was, whatever I wasn't—it's all in what I am. Whatever I wanted, whatever I didn't want—all of this has shaped me. Whatever I loved, or stopped loving—in me it's the same nostalgia (Álvaro de Campos)

Why try to be like others if you're condemned to being yourself? Why laugh if, when you laugh, even your genuine happiness is false, since it is born of forgetting who you are? Why cry if you feel it's of no use, and if you cry not because tears console you but because it grieves you that they don't?

Porque o único sentido oculto das cousas  É elas não terem sentido oculto

Passa uma borboleta por diante de mim E pela primeira vez no Universo eu reparo Que as borboletas não têm cor nem movimento, Assim como as flores não têm perfume nem cor. A cor é que tem cor nas asas da borboleta, No movimento da borboleta o movimento é que se move, O perfume é que tem perfume no perfume da flor. A borboleta é apenas borboleta E a flor é apenas flor.

A Natureza é partes sem um todo. Isto é talvez o tal mistério de que falam.

Life would be unbearable if we made ourselves conscious of it.

Nada fica de nada. Nada somos. Um pouco ao sol e ao ar nos atrasamos Da irrespirável treva que nos pese Da húmida terra imposta, Cadáveres adiados que procriam. Leis feitas, 'státuas vistas, odes findas - Tudo tem cova sua. Se nós, carnes A que um íntimo sol dá sangue, temos Poente, porque não elas? Somos contos contando contos, nada.

Circondati di rose, ama, bevi e taci. Il resto è niente.

O inexplicável horror De saber que esta vida é verdadeira, Que é uma coisa real, que é [como um] ser Em todo o seu mistério [...] Realmente real.

El corazón, si pudiese pensar, se pararía.

I'll be in an institution for paupers, happy in my utter defeat, mixed up with the rabble of would-be geniuses who were no more than beggars with dreams, thrown in with the anonymous throng of those who didn't have strength enough to conquer nor renunciation enough to conquer by not competing.