Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

To choose ways of not acting was ever the concern and scruple of my life.

We, all who live, have A life that is lived And another life that is thought, And the only life we have It's the one that is divided In right or wrong.

I will be what I want. But I will have to want what I'll be. Success is in having success, not conditions for success.

But do we really live? To live without knowing what life is - is that living?

It's in an inland sea that the river of my life ended.

Life is a thread that someone entangled.

It's been a long time since I've been me.

I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.

I search and can't find myself. I belong in chrysanthemum time, sharp in calla lily elongations. God made my soul into an ornamental thing.

Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions.

Life is whatever we conceive it to be.

All pleasure is a vice, for seeking pleasure is what everybody does in life, and the only dark vice is doing what everybody does.

Life hurls us like a stone, and we sail through the air saying, "look at me move.

Everything I sought in life I abandoned for the sake of the search. I'm like one who absentmindedly looks for he doesn't know what, having forgotten it in his dreaming as the search got under way.

pg 9, "The consciousness of life's unconsciousness is the oldest tax levied on the intelligence.

I come closer to my desk as to a bulwark against life.

Wise is he who enjoys the show offered by the world.

We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.

To love is to tire of being alone; it is therefore a cowardice, a betrayal of ourselves. (It is exceedingly important that we not love.)

All is worthwhile if the soul is not small.

Wasting time has an esthetics to it.

Look, there's no metaphysics on earth but chocolates.

Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveler. What we see isn't what we see but what we are.

I sometimes think that I enjoy suffering. But the truth is I would prefer something else.