Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

Una sola cosa mi meraviglia più della stupidità con cui la maggior parte degli uomini vive la sua vita: l'intelligenza che c'è in questa stupidità.

Happy the man, then, who renounces everything and from whom, therefore, nothing can be taken or subtracted.

Hissetmek- ne renktir acaba?

La manía por el absurdo y la paradoja es la alegría animal de los tristes.

Não se pode comer um bolo sem o perder.

The rustic, the reader of novels, the pure ascetic: these three are the truly happy men, because they have all renounced their personality — the first because he lives by instinct, which is impersonal, the second because he lives through his imagination, which is oblivion, and the third because he does not live and, not yet having died, sleeps.

No he hecho más que soñar. Ése ha sido y sigue siendo, incluso, el sentido de mi vida. Nunca he tenido otra preocupación verdadera que no fuese mi vida interior. Los mayores dolores de mi vida se desvanecen cuando, al abrir la ventana hacia la calle de mis sueños, consigo enajenarme en la visión de su movimiento.

I desire what I do not desire and renounce what I do not have. I can be neither nothing nor everything: I'm just the bridge between what I do not have and what I do not want.

Tenho pensamentos que, se conseguisse realizá-los e torná-los vivos, acrescentariam uma nova luz às estrelas, uma nova beleza ao mundo e um maior amor ao coração dos homens.

Every good conversation should be a two-way monologue… We should ultimately be unable to tell whether we really talked with someone or simply imagined the conversation… The best and profoundest conversations, and the least morally instructive ones, are those that novelists have between two characters from one of their books.

Ik heb nooit meer van het leven verlangd dan dat dat niets van mij zou eisen.

Convivir es morir. Para mí, sólo mi autoconsciencia es real; los demás son fenómenos inciertos en esa conciencia, y sería enfermizo prestarles una realidad muy verdadera.

I feel this because I feel nothing. I think this because this is nothing. Nothing, nothing, part of the night and the silence and what I share with them of vacancy, of negativity, of in-betweenness, a gap between me and myself, something forgotten by some god or other … 442

satisfied with dreams only when I'm not dreaming, satisfied with the world only when I'm dreaming far away from it. A swinging pendulum, back and forth, forever moving to arrive nowhere, eternally captive to the twin fatality of a centre and a useless motion.

To imagine, without being, is the throne. To desire, without wanting, is the crown. We have what we renounce, for we conserve it eternally intact in our dreams, by the light of the sun that isn't, or of the moon that cannot be.

We may be guided by an illusion, but one thing is sure, it is not our consciousness that guides us.

Siempre he pertenecido a lo que no está donde estoy y a lo que no he podido ser nunca.

I see humanity as merely one of Nature's latest schools of decorative painting. I don't distinguish in any fundamental way between a man and a tree, and I naturally prefer whichever is more decorative, whichever interests my thinking eyes.

Love is a mysticism that wants to be put into practice, an impossibility that according to our dreams should be possible.

And my heart is a little larger than the entire universe. — Álvaro de Campos, from "[I got off the train]," 4 July 1934, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems by Fernando Pessoa , ed. & trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin Classics, 2006)

No el amor, sino los alrededores es lo que vale la pena... La represión del amor ilumina sus fenómenos con mucha más claridad que la misma experiencia.

I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me. A nearby field, a ray of sunlight, a little bit of calm along with a bit of bread, not to feel oppressed by the knowledge that I exist, not to demand anything from others, and not to have others demand anything from me—this was denied me, like the spare change we might deny a beggar not because we're mean-hearted but because we don't feel like unbuttoning our coat.

Despedíos del error infantil de preguntar el sentido de las cosas y las palabras. Nada tiene sentido.

Irony is the first sign that our consciousness has become conscious, and it passes through two stages: the one represented by Socrates, when he says, 'All I know is that I know nothing,' and the other represented by Sanches,* when he says, 'I don't even know if I know nothing.