Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

The country morning exists; the city morning promises. The former makes one live; the latter makes one think.

109 [126] Even my dreams turn on me. I achieve such a degree of lucidity in them that I perceived as real everything I dreamed. So, because I dreamed it, was everything I valued just a waste of time?

We were born into a world that has suffered from a century and a half of renunciation and violence – the renunciation of superior men and the violence of inferior men, which is their victory.

I was shipwrecked beneath a stormless sky in a sea shallow enough to stand up in.

When it comes to dreams, I'm no different from the errand boy and the seamstress. The only thing that distinguishes me from them is that I can write. Yes, that's an activity, a real fact about myself that distinguishes me from them. But in my soul I'm just the same.

Outros haverão de ter O que houvermos de perder. Outros poderão achar O que, no nosso encontrar, Foi achado, ou não achado, Segundo o destino dado.

My sensitivity to all things new is a constant affliction to me; I only feel safe in places I have been in before.

The country morning exists; the city morning promises. The former makes one live; the latter makes one think. And I'm doomed always to feel, like the world's great damned men, that it's better to think than to live. 202

Abdicate from life in order not to abdicate from yourself.

16 [74] [...] Ships that pass in the night and neither acknowledge or recognize one another [...]

O outro é sempre o obstáculo para quem procura. Só quem não procura é feliz; porque só quem não busca, encontra, visto que quem não procura já tem, e já ter, seja o que for, é ser feliz, como não pensar é a parte melhor de ser rico

Încep s? m? cunosc.Eu nu exist. Sunt intervalul dintre ceea ce doresc s? fiu ÅŸi ceea ce au f?cut alÅ£ii din mine, Sau jum?tatea acestui interval,c?ci mai exist? ÅŸi via??... Asta sunt,în sfârÅŸit... Stinge lumina,închide uÅŸa,f? cumva s? nu se mai aud? târâÅŸitul papucilor pe coridor, S? pot r?mâne singur în camer? ÅŸi s?-mi tihneasc? bine de mine însumi. E un univers ieftin.

Para el hombre vulgar, sentir es vivir y pensar es saber vivir. Para mí, pensar es vivir y sentir no es más que el alimento del pensar.

Men of action are the involuntary slaves of the men of reason. The worth of things depends on their interpretation. Certain men make things which other men invest with meaning, bringing them to life. To narrate is to create, while to live is merely to be lived.

Desceu sobre nós a mais profunda e a mais mortal das secas dos séculos - a do conhecimento íntimo da vacuidade de todos os esforços e da vaidade de todos os propósitos.

And in each corner of my soul there's an altar to a different god.

20 [56] That is the central error of a literary imagination: the idea that other people are like us and must therefore feel like us. Fortunately for humanity, each man is only himself and only the genius is given the ability to be others as well.

I feel nostalgia for the possibility of one day feeling nostalgia, regardless of how absurd that nostalgia may seem.

Reading the newspaper is always unpleasant from an aesthetic point of view, and often from a moral point of view as well, even for those who don't worry much about morality. Reading about the effects of wars and revolutions – there's always one or the other in the news – doesn't make us feel horror but tedium.

soy del tamaño de lo que veo y no del tamaño de mi estatura»

It was in a certain sense home – the place, that is, where one doesn't feel.

Because I am nothing, I can imagine myself to be anything. If I were somebody, I wouldn't be able to. An assistant bookkeeper can imagine himself to be a Roman emperor; the King of England can't do that, because the King of England has lost the ability in his dreams to be any other king than the one he is. His reality does not allow him to exist.

Only unhappiness raises us up — and the tedium we draw from that unhappiness is as heraldic as being the descendant of distant heroes.

I know of no pleasure like that of books, yet I read very little. Books are the entryway to dreams, but people at ease in life don't need such introductions to enter into conversation with dreams. I could never read a book and give myself over to it; always, with each step, the commentary of my intellect or my imagination interrupts the narrative sequence. After some minutes I am the one who writes and the writing is nowhere to be seen.