Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

To be great, be whole; Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you. Be whole in everything. Put all you are Into the smallest thing you do. So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor Because it blooms up above.

I've dreamed a lot. I'm tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything.

The value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. That is why there are unforgettable moments and unique people!

If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.

I've always been an ironic dreamer, unfaithful to my inner promises. Like a complete outsider, a casual observer of whom I thought I was, I've always enjoyed watching my daydreams go down in defeat. I was never convinced of what I believed in. I filled my hands with sand, called it gold, and opened them up to let it slide through. Words were my only truth. When the right words were said, all was done; the rest was the sand that had always been.

Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!

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

If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.

To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.

These pages are not my confession; they're my definition. And I feel, as I begin to write it, that I can write it with some semblance of truth.

If we knew the truth, we'd see it; all else is system and outskirts.

If this be to have sense, if to be awake Be but to see this bright, great sleep of things, For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll take And for truth commune with imaginings

To feel today what one felt yesterday isn't to feel - it's to remember today what was felt yesterday, to be today's living corpse of what yesterday was lived and lost.

Children are particularly literary, for they say what they feel not what someone has taught them to feel.

No-one loves another More than he loves whatever another within may haveThat is part of one's self

Ah, who will save me from existing? It's neither death nor life that I want.

Since I wasn't able to leave a succession of beautiful lies, I want to leave the smidgen of truth that the falsehood of everything lets us suppose we can tell.

I crave time in all its duration, and I want to be myself unconditionally.

And as well as I dream, I reason if I want, for that's just another kind of dream.

The human soul is an abyss

Without madness what is man But a wholesome beast, Postponed corpse that begets?

At first, it's unfamiliar, then it strikes root.

Every man who deserves to be famous knows it is not worth the trouble.

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