Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn't exist.

Having never discovered qualities in myself that might attract someone else, I could never believe that anyone felt attracted to me.

And, like the great damned souls, I shall always feel that thinking is worth more than living.

At first I felt dizzy - not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void.

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

I Know, I Alone I know, I alone How much it hurts, this heart With no faith nor law Nor melody nor thought. Only I, only I And none of this can I say Because feeling is like the sky - Seen, nothing in it to see.

Whether or not they exist we are slaves to our gods.

To live is to be someone else. Feeling is impossible if we feel today as we felt yesterday: to feel today the same thing we felt yesterday is not to feel at all--it's merely to remember today what we felt yesterday, since today we are the living cadaver of yesterday's lost life.

But my sadness is comforting Because it's right and natural And because it's what the soul should feel When it already thinks it exists And the hand pick flowers And the soul takes no notice.

My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me.

I sometimes think that I enjoy suffering. But the truth is I would prefer something else.

The unnatural and the strange have a perfume of their own

I am the escaped one, After I was born They locked me up inside me But I left. My soul seeks me, Through hills and valley, I hope my soul Never finds me.

Se te é impossível viver só, nasceste escravo.

What can I expect from myself? My sensation in all their horrible acuity, and a profound awareness of feeling. A sharp mind that only destroys me, and an unusual capacity for dreaming to keep me entertained. A dead will and a reflection that cradles it, like a living child.

what has happened to us has happened to everyone or only us; if to everyone, then it's no novelty, and if only to us, then it won't be understood.

Tudo vale a pena quando a alma não é pequena

Be what I think? But I think of being so many things!

In the ordinary jumble of my literary drawer, I sometimes find texts I wrote ten, fifteen, or even more years ago. And many of them seem to me written by a stranger: I simply do not recognize myself in them. There was a person who wrote them, and it was I. I experienced them, but it was in another life, from which I just woke up, as if from someone else's dream.

to know how to think with emotions and to feel with intellect…

Without madness what is man But a wholesome beast, Postponed corpse that begets?

I don't mourn the loss of my childhood; I mourn because everything, including (my) childhood, is lost.

There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes to where life is not painful; nor is there a port of call where it is possible to forget.

My God, my God, whose performance am I watching? How many people am I? Who am I? What is this space between myself and myself?