And, like the great damned souls, I shall always feel that thinking is worth more than living.
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.
I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me. A nearby field, a ray of sunlight, a little bit of calm along with a bit of bread, not to feel oppressed by the knowledge that I exist, not to demand anything from others, and not to have others demand anything from me - this was denied me, like the spare change we might deny a beggar not because we're mean-hearted but because we don't feel like unbuttoning our coat.
Changing from the ghosts of faith to the spectres of reason is just changing cells.
Oh salty sea, how much of your salt Is tears from Portugal?
If, on thinking this, I look up to see if reality can quench my thirst, I see inexpressive facades, inexpressive faces, inexpressive gestures. Stones, bodies, ideas - all dead. All movements are one great standstill. Nothing means anything to me, not because it's unfamiliar but because I don't know what it is. The world has slipped away. And in the bottom of my soul - as the only reality of this moment - there's an intense and invisible grief, a sadness like the sound of someone crying in a dark room.
Without madness what is man But a wholesome beast, Postponed corpse that begets?
Give to each emotion a personality, to each state of mind a soul.
To have opinions is to sell out to youself. To have no opinions is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.
Being a retired major looks like an ideal thing to me. What a pity you couldn't eternally have been just a retired major.
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.
For I am the size of what I see / not my height's size.
The sea with an end can be Greek or Roman: the endless sea is Portuguese.
I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing; it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will's surrender. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.
Blessed are those who entrust their lives to no one.
Yes, talking to people makes me sleepy.
We live by action—by acting on desire. Those of us who don't know how to want—whether geniuses or beggars—are related by impotence.
I’m losing my taste for everything, including even my taste for finding everything tasteless.
I sometimes think that I enjoy suffering. But the truth is I would prefer something else.
God gave the sea the danger and the abyss, but it was in it that He mirrored the sky.
Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally. The end result is what matters. What one felt was what one experienced. One retires to bed as wearily from having dreamed as from having done hard physical labor. One never lives so intensely as when one has been thinking hard.
In this metallic age of barbarians, only a relentless cultivation of our ability to dream, to analyse and to captivate can prevent our personality from degenerating into nothing or else into a personality like all the rest.
Destiny gave me only two things: a few accounting books and the gift of dreaming.
Look, there's no metaphysics on earth but chocolates.
My soul's the present shadow of a presence gone.
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