Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

Since life is essentially a mental state and everything that we do or think is only as valuable as we think it is, it depends on us for any value it may have.

I've done nothing nor will I ever do anything useful to justify my existence.

I consider myself fortunate for no longer having family, as it relieves me of the obligation to love someone, which I would surely find oppressive.

Every man of action is basically cheerful and optimistic, because those who don't feel are happy.

a tedium of feeling anything at all ...

Wise is the man who has the potential for height in his muscles but who renounces climbing in his consciousness. By virtue of his gaze, he has all hills, and by virtue of his position, all valleys. The sun that gilds the summits will gild them more for him than for someone at the top who must endure the bright light; and the palace perched high in the woods will be more beautiful for those who see it from the valley than for those who, imprisoned in its rooms, forget it. I

I enjoy using words. Or rather: I enjoy making words work.

And then I feel an overwhelming, absurd desire for a kind of Satanism before Satan, a desire that one day – a day without time or substance – an escape leading outside of God will be discovered, and our deepest selves will somehow cease participating in being and non-being.

For days we slept wakefully, content to be nothing, to have no desires or hopes, to have forgotten the color of love or the taste of hatred.

La dulzura del pasado? El recordarlo, puesto que recordarlo es hacerlo presente y no lo es ni ya lo puede ser —el absurdo, mi amor, el absurdo.

A vida, para a maioria dos homens, é uma maçada passada sem se dar por isso, uma coisa triste composta de intervalos alegres, (...) Achei sempre fútil considerar a vida como um vale de lágrimas: é um vale de lágrimas, sim, mas onde raras vezes se chora. Disse Heine que, depois das grandes tragédias, acabamos sempre por nos assoar.

The truly superior (and the happiest) men are those who, perceiving that everything is a fiction, make up their own novel before someone else does it for them and, like Machiavelli, don courtly robes in order to write in secret.

To associate is to die. Only my consciousness of myself is real for me; other people are hazy phenomena in this consciousness, and it would be morbid to attribute very much reality to them.

Every struggle, no matter what its goal, is forced by life to make adjustments; it becomes a different struggle, serves different ends, and sometimes accomplishes the very opposite of what it set out to do. Only slight goals are worth pursuing, because only a slight goal can be entirely ful

there's novelty and there's the boredom of the eternally new, and the latter brings about the death of the former.

I want you only for my dreams,' they tell the beloved woman in verses they never send – they who dare not tell her anything. This 'I want you only for my dreams' is a verse from an old poem of mine. I record the memory with a smile, and don't even comment on the smile.

Nothing needs to be done On the eve of never departing.

There is no reason for any of our desires to exist. Our attention is an absurdity allowed by our winged inertia.

Se mi capita di essere coerente, è solo per incoerenza della mia incoerenza.

Only people who wear clothes find the naked body beautiful. The overriding value of modesty for sensuality is that it acts as a brake on energy.

Oggi la mia anima è triste fino al corpo. Tutto me stesso mi duole: la memoria, gli occhi, le braccia.

The downfall of classical ideals made all men potential artists, and therefore bad artists. When art depended on solid construction and the careful observance of rules, few could attempt to be artists, and a fair number of these were quite good. But when art, instead of being understood as creation, became merely an expression of feelings, then anyone could be an artist, because everyone has feelings.

Every spoken word double-crosses us. The only tolerable form of communication is the written word, since it isn't a stone in a bridge between souls but a ray of light between stars.

the royal crown and robe are never as grand as when the departing king leaves them on the ground ...