Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

Para mí, la humanidad es un vasto motivo de ornamentación que vive en los ojos y en los oídos y acaso en la emoción sicológica.

The beauty of ruins? That they're no longer good for anything.

I dream because I dream, but I don't insult myself by giving to dreams a value they do not have, apart from that of being my personal theatre, just as I do not call wine (from which I still do not abstain) 'food' or 'one of life's necessities'.

Every day I'm mistreated by Matter.

O mundo exterior existe como um ator num palco: está lá mas é outra coisa.

En la vida actual, el mundo sólo pertenece a los estúpidos, los insensibles y los agitados. El derecho a vivir y triunfar se conquista hoy casi a través de los mismos procedimientos con los que se conquista el internamiento en un manicomio: la incapacidad de pensar, la amoralidad y la hiperexcitación.

I have to choose what I detest - either dreaming, which my intelligence hates, or action, which my sensibility loathes; either action, for which I wasn't born, or dreaming, for which no one was born. Detesting both, I choose neither; but since I must on occasion either dream or act, I mix the two things together.

He vivido tanto sin haber vivido! ¡He pensado tanto sin haber pensado! Pesan sobre mí mundos de violencias detenidas, de aventuras vividas sin movimiento. Estoy harto de lo que nunca he tenido ni tendré, tedioso de dioses por existir. Llevo conmigo las heridas de todas las batallas que he evitado. Mi cuerpo muscular está molido por el esfuerzo que no he podido hacer.

Reason is faith in what can be understood without faith, but it's still a faith, since to understand presupposes that there's something understandable.

I am troubled by a crushing physical sense of other people's lack of comprehension.

Colaborar, relacionarse, hacer cosas con otros es un impulso metafísicamente enfermizo. El alma que es dada al individuo no debe prestarse a sus relaciones con los demás. El hecho divino de existir no debe ser entregado al hecho satánico de coexistir.

we're shadows of gestures performed by someone else, embodied effects, consequences that feel.

O prazer é para os cães, o bem-estar material é para os escravos; o homem tem a honra e o domínio.

La letteratura, come tutta l'arte, è la confessione che la vita non basta.

Pero ¿de verdad vivimos? Vivir sin saber qué es la vida, ¿será vivir?.

Al hacer las cosas con otros pierdo, por lo menos una cosa, que es hacer las cosas solo.

Privirea mea albastr? ca bolta cerului E calm? ca apele însorite. Chiar aÈ™a este, albastr? È™i calm?, Cum nici nu întreab? È™i nici nu se mir?... Dac? eu m-aÈ™ întreba È™i m-aÈ™ minuna Nu s-ar mai ivi pe câmpuri flori noi ?i nici nu s-ar schimba ceva în soare ca s? devin? astfel È™i mai mândru.

So many times, so many, like now, it has oppressed me to feel myself feel – to feel anguish just because it's a feeling, restlessness because I'm here, nostalgia for something I've never known, the sunset of all emotions, myself yellowing, subdued to grey sadness in my external selfawareness.

The more I meditate on our capacity for self-deception, the more my certainties crumble, slipping through my fingers as fine sand. And when this meditation becomes a feeling that clouds my mind, then the whole world appears to me as a mist made of shadows, a twilight of edges and corners, a fiction of the interlude,* a dawn that never becomes morning.

It is noble to be shy, illustrious not to know how to act, great not to have a gift for living.

The truth is that nothing changes anything and what we say or do only brushes the tops of the mountains in whose valleys all things sleep.

There's no better sign that a civilization has reached its height than the awareness, in its members, of the futility of all effort, given that we're ruled by implacable laws, which nothing can repeal or obstruct.

Diktaren är en låtsare. / Han låtsas så fullständigt / att han till och med låtsas ha ont / av de smärtor han verkligen känner.

There's no sunset so lovely it couldn't be yet lovelier, no gentle breeze bringing us sleep that couldn't bring a yet sounder sleep.