Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

Yes, the sounds of the city on this long Sunday – so many, all at odds, and all of them right.

Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily.

THE WIND IN THE DARKNESS HOWLS The wind in the darkness howls, Its sound reaching ever farther. The substance of my thought Is that it cannot cease. It seems the soul has a darkness In which blows ever harder A madness that derives From wanting to understand. The wind in the darkness rages, Unable to free itself. I'm a prisoner to my thought As the wind is a prisoner to air.

I always thought of metaphysics as a prolonged form of latent madness.

O essencial é saber ver, Saber ver sem estar a pensar, Saber ver quando se vê, E nem pensar quando se vê Nem ver quando se pensa.   Mas isso (tristes de nós que trazemos a alma vestida!), Isso exige um estudo profundo, Uma aprendizagem de desaprender E

I always find it hard to admit that anything done collectively can possibly be sincere, since the only truly sentient being is the individual).

To conform is to submit, and to conquer is to conform, to be conquered. Thus every victory is a debasement. The conqueror inevitably loses all the marks of frustration with the status quo that led him to the fight that brought victory. He becomes satisfied, and only those who conform – who lack the conqueror's mentality – are satisfied. Only the man who never achieves his goal conquers. Only the man who is forever discouraged is strong.

In another age we mastered the physical ocean, thereby creating universal civilization; now we will master the psychological ocean, emotion, mother human nature, thereby creating intellectual civilization.

To publish – the socialization of one's self. A vile necessity! But still not a real act, since it's the publisher who makes money, the printer who produces. It at least has the merit of being incoherent.

I cultivate hatred of action like a greenhouse flower. I dissent from life and am proud of it.

To live is to be other. It's not even possible to feel, if one feels today what he felt yesterday. To feel today what one felt yesterday isn't to feel – it's to remember today what was felt yesterday, to be today's living corpse of what yesterday was lived and lost.

How many things that we consider right or true are merely the vestiges of our dreams, the sleepwalking figures of our incomprehension! Does anyone know what's right or true? How many things we consider beautiful are merely the fashion of the day, the fiction of their time and place! How many things we consider ours are utterly foreign to our blood, we being merely their perfect mirrors or transparent wrappers!

Quién en este largo mundo me confesaría haber sido vil una vez?

It is a rule of life that we can and must learn from everyone. There are serious matters in life to be learned from charlatans and bandits, there are philosophies to be gleaned from fools, real lessons of fortitude that come to us by chance and from those who depend on chance. Everything contains everything else.

Desengañémonos de la esperanza, porque traiciona en el amor, porque cansa en la vida, porque harta y no se sacia, y hasta de la muerte, porque trae más de lo que se quiere y menos de lo que se espera.

Sí, el tedio es eso: la pérdida, a través del alma, de su capacidad para ilusionarse; la falta, en el pensamiento, de la escalera inexistente por la que ascender confiado a la verdad.

Singurul mod de a ne putem pune de acord cu viaÅ£a este s? fim în dezacord cu noi înÅŸine.Absurdul este Divinul.

A MORTE CHEGA CEDO   A morte chega cedo, Pois breve é toda vida O instante é o arremedo De uma coisa perdida.   O amor foi começado, O ideal não acabou, E quem tenha alcançado Não sabe o que alcançou.   E tudo isto a morte Risca por não estar certo No caderno da sorte

To act – that is true wisdom. I can be what I want to be, but I have to want whatever it is. Success consists in being successful, not in having the potential for success. Any wide piece of ground is the potential site of a palace, but there's no palace until it's built

Nothing is worthwhile, my distant love, except knowing how sweet it is to know that nothing is worthwhile

Every part of me is a vague nostalgia neither for the past nor for the future: the whole of me is a nostalgia for the anonymous, prolix, unfathomable present.

I was born in a time when the majority of young people had lost faith in God, for the same reason their elders had had it – without knowing why.

Amar es fastidioso, pero tal vez sea preferible a no amar.

I'd like the reading of this book to leave you with the impression of continual tedium in a sensual nightmare.