Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

I am nothing. I'll never be anything. I couldn't want to be something. Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams in the world.

The only freedom the gods grant usIs this: to submitOf our own free will to their sovereignty.We should do just that,Since only in the illusion of freedomDoes freedom exist.

My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while. […]. I'm two, and both keep their distance — Siamese twins that aren't attached.

Sit still with me in the shade of these green trees, which have no weightier thought than the withering of their leaves when autumn arrives, or the stretching of their many stiff fingers into the cold sky of the passing winter.

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

Out of a few misunderstandings with reality we construct beliefs and hopes, and we live on these crusts, which we call bread, just like poor children who play at being happy.

Success consists in being successful, not in having potential for success. Any wide piece of ground is the potential site of a palace, but there's no palace till it's built.

Nature is parts without a whole.This is perhaps the mystery they speak of.

My past is everything I failed to be.

My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while. […]. I'm two, and both keep their distance — Siamese twins that aren't attached.

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

No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it

There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.

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.

In order to understand, I destroyed myself.

I wasn't meant for reality, but life came and found me.

I am nothing. I'll never be anything. I couldn't want to be something. Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams in the world.

I suffer from life and from other people. I can't look at reality face to face. Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful — only then do I find myself and feel comforted.

My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.

I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.

I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided.

I've never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has been my inner life.

Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality - it's all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. What I'm attending here is a show with another set. And the show I'm attending is myself.

We worship perfection because we can't have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.