Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

Porque soy del tamaño de lo que veo y no del tamaño de mi altura. Frases como estas, que parecen crecer sin voluntad que las hubiera dicho, me limpian de toda la metafísica que añado a mi vida. Después de leerlas, me acerco a mi ventana sobre la calle estrecha, observo el vasto cielo y los muchos astros y soy libre con un esplendor alado cuya vibración me estremece el cuerpo entero.

The rain outside was cold in Hadrian's soul.

Muerte somos y muerte vivimos. Nacemos muertos, muertos pasamos y muertos ya, irrumpimos en la Muerte.

Laguna de la posesión (II) Nada puede penetrarse, ni los átomos ni las almas. Por eso nada posee nada. Desde la verdad hasta un pañuelo —todo es imposeible. La propiedad no es un robo: no es nada.

Flashes of awareness that we live an illusion – that, and no more, is what distinguishes the greatest of men.

I've always felt an almost physical repugnance for secret things — intrigues, diplomacy, secret societies, occultism

Revolutionary or reformer – the error is the same. Unable to dominate and reform his own attitude towards life, which is everything, or his own being, which is almost everything, he flees, devoting himself to modifying others and the outside world. Every revolutionary and reformer is a fugitive. To fight for change is to be incapable of changing oneself. To reform is to be beyond repair.

Sabio es quien monotoniza la existencia, puesto que entonces cada pequeño incidente tiene un privilegio de maravilla. El cazador de leones no tiene aventuras más allá del tercer león. Para mi cocinero monótono, una escena de bofetadas en la calle tiene siempre algo de apocalipsis modesto. Quien no ha salido nunca de Lisboa viaja al infinito en el tranvía cuando va a Bemfica77 y, si un día va a Cintra,78 siente que ha ido a Marte.

Which of us turning to look back down the road along which there is no return, could say that we had walked that road as we should have?

To go from the phantoms of faith to the ghosts of reason is merely to change cells. Art, if it frees us from the abstract idols of old, should also free us from magnanimous ideas and social concerns, which are likewise idols.

Siempre he creído que la virtud estaba en obtener lo que no se alcanza, en vivir donde no se está, en estar más vivo después de muerto que cuando se estaba vivo, en conseguir, en fin, algo difícil, absurdo, en vencer, como un obstáculo, la propia realidad del mundo.

Nunca he podido leer un libro entregándome a él; siempre, a cada paso, el comentario de la inteligencia o de la imaginación me ha interrumpido la secuencia de la propia narrativa. Después de unos minutos, quien escribía era yo, y lo que estaba escrito no estaba en ninguna parte.

Twice in my adolescence – which I feel so remotely it seems like someone else's story that I read or was told – I enjoyed the humiliating grief of being in love. From my present vantage point, looking back to that past which I can no longer designate as 'long ago' or 'recent', I think it was good that this experience of disillusion happened to me so early.

El mundo exterior existe como un actor en un escenario: está allí pero es otra cosa.

Freedom would mean rest, artistic achievement, the intellectual fulfillment of my being.

I prefer a defeat that knows the beauty of flowers to a victory in the desert, full of blindness in the soul, alone with its isolated nothingness.

Tedium … To suffer without suffering, to want without desire, to think without reason … It's like being possessed by a negative demon

El único modo de estar de acuerdo con el mundo es estar en desacuerdo con nosotros mismos. El absurdo es divino.

To be lucid is to be indisposed towards oneself. The only legitimate state of mind when looking inside oneself is that of someone who sees only nerves and indecisions.

A boat would seem to be an object whose one purpose is to travel, but its real purpose is not to travel but to reach harbour. We found ourselves on the high seas, with no idea of which port we should be aiming for.

we who are as much the vegetables of truth as we are of life, the dust that covers the windowpanes both inside and out, the grandchildren of Destiny and the stepchildren of God, who married Eternal Night when she was left a widow by Chaos, our true father.

Si odio algo, es a un reformista. Un reformista es un hombre que ve los males superficiales del mundo y se propone curarlos agravando los fundamentales.

Man should not be able to see his own face. Nothing is more terrible than that. Nature gave him the gift of being unable either to see his face or to look into his own eyes. He could only see his own face in the waters of rivers and lakes. Even the posture he had to adopt to do so was symbolic. He had to bend down, to lower himself, in order to commit the ignominy of seeing his own face. The creator of the mirror poisoned the human soul.

The end of the world, like the beginning, is in fact our concept of the world.