Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

With this thoroughly established, complete and autonomous plays can unfold in us line by line. We may no longer have the energy to write them, but that won't be necessary. We'll be able to create secondhand; we can imagine one poet writing in us in one way, while another poet will write in a different way. I, having refined this skill to a considerable degree, can write in countlessly different ways, all of them original.

Solitude devastates me, company oppresses me.

32 [151] Dawn in the countryside just exists; dawn in the city overflows with promise. One makes you live, the other makes you think. And, along with all the other great unfortunates, I've always believed it's better to think than to live.

We're stories telling stories, (…)

The Gods are the incarnation of what we can never be. The weariness of all hypotheses …

Mas imperfeito é tudo, nem há poente tão belo que o não pudesse ser mais, ou brisa leve que nos dê sono que não pudesse dar-nos um sono mais calmo ainda.

There's metaphysics enough in not thinking about anything.

Action disconcerts us, partly because of our physical incompetence, but mainly because it offends our moral sensibility. We consider it immoral to act. It seems to us that every thought is debased when expressed in words, which transform the thought into the property of others, making it understandable to anyone who can understand it.

Eu amo tudo o que foi Eu amo tudo o que foi, Tudo o que já não é, A dor que já me não dói, A antiga e errônea fé, O ontem que dor deixou, O que deixou alegria Só porque foi, e voou E hoje é já outro dia.

Vicente Guedes endured his empty life with masterly indifference, the foundations of his mental attitude being built on the stoicism of the weak.

Necesitar el dominio sobre los demás es necesitar de los demás.

What's in all this besides myself? Ah, but that, and that alone, is tedium. In all of this – the sky, the earth, the world – there is nothing at all but me!

aquele Jesus Cristo que não foi nada no mundo, tanto que se duvida dele pela história

El mundo es para quien nace para conquistarlo y no para quien sueña que puede conquistarlo, aunque tenga razón.

L?udat fie Domnul pentru faptul c? nu sunt bun, Åži c? am egoismul natural al florilor Sau al râurilor ce îÅŸi urmeaz? calea Preocupate f?r? s?-ÅŸi de-a seama Doar s? înfloreasc? sau s? curg? la vale. Iat? singura misiune pe-aceast? lume, Asta ÅŸi numai asta- adic? a exista cât se poate de clar, Åži a ÅŸti s? o faci f?r? s? te gândeÅŸti c? exiÅŸti.

Eu tenho um colar de pérolas Enfiado para te dar: As per'las são os meus beijos, O fio é o meu penar.

I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist. I paced from one side of the room to the other, dreaming out loud incoherent and impossible things – deeds I'd forgotten to do, hopeless ambitions haphazardly realized, fluid and lively conversations which, were they to be, would already have been.

Yet dreamed landscapes are merely the smoke from known landscapes and the tedium of dreaming them is almost as great as the tedium of looking at the world. And hovering distractedly above all this, like a vast blue sky, the horror of living.

Two people say 'I love you' or mutually think it and feel it, and each has in mind a different idea, a different life, perhaps even a different colour or fragrance, in the abstract sum of impressions that constitute the soul's activity.

I'M HELD by nothing, I hold on to nothing, I belong to nothing.

The repression of love sheds much more light on its nature than does the actual experience of it. Virginity can be a key to profound understanding.

Outrora eu era daqui, e hoje regresso estrangeiro, Forasteiro do que vejo e ouço, velho de mim. Já vi tudo, ainda o que nunca vi, nem o que nunca verei. Eu reinei no que nunca fui.

Deixa que um momento pense Que ainda vives ao meu lado... Triste de quem por si mesmo Precisa ser enganado!

the chance circumstances of his life and the direction it had taken were dictated by his instincts, in his case inertia and detachment.