Fernando Pessoa Quotes - Page 10

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• I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Littles, Denied

  Fernando Pessoa (2007). “The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa”, p.321, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Property isn't theft: it's nothing.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Theft, Property

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.496, Penguin UK

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• I never had anyone I could call “Master”. No Christ died for me. No Buddha showed me the right path. In the depths of my dreams no Apollo or Athena appeared to me to enlighten my soul

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Soul, Depth

  Fernando Pessoa (2010). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.50, Profile Books

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

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dark, Vices, Doe

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p. 265, 1982.

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• Tomorrow I too – this feeling and thinking soul, the universe I am to myself – yes, tomorrow I too will be someone who no longer walks these streets, someone others will evoke with a vague: 'I wonder what's become of him?” And everything I do, everything I feel, everything I experience, will be just one less passer-by on the daily streets of some city or other.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Thinking, Cities, Soul

  "The Book of Disquiet".

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• Every gesture is a revolutionary act.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Gestures, Revolutionary

  Fernando Pessoa (2010). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.256, Profile Books

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• Silence emerges from the sound of rain and spreads in a crescendo of gray monotony over the narrow street I contemplate. I’m sleeping while awake, standing by the window, leaning against it as against everything. I search in myself for the sensations I feel before these falling threads of darkly luminous water that stand out from the grimy building facades and especially from the open windows. And I don’t know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don’t know what to think or where I am.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Rain, Fall, Sleep

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.63, Penguin UK

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• Walking on these streets, until the night falls, my life feels to me like the life they have. By day they’re full of meaningless activity; by night, they’re full of meaningless lack of it. By day I am nothing, and by night I am I. There is no difference between me and these streets, save they being streets and I a soul, which perhaps is irrelevant when we consider the essence of things

  Fernando Pessoa

  Fall, Night, Essence

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, "A Factless Autobiography", number 3, translation by Richard Zenith, 1982.

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• The poet is a pretender. / He pretends so completely, / that he even pretends that it is pain / the pain he really feels.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Pain, Poetry, Feels

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• I have at this moment so many fundamental thoughts, so many truly metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write any more, not to think any more, but to allow the fever of speaking to make me sleepy, and with my eyes closed, like a cat, I play with everything I could have said.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Writing, Tired, Cat

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• After the rains departed the skies and settled on earth - clear skies; moist brilliant earth - greater clarity returned to life alone with the blue above and made the world below rejoice with the freshness of the recent rain. It left heaven in our souls and a freshness in our hearts.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Rain, Heart, Blue

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• But my sadness is comforting Because it’s right and natural And because it’s what the soul should feel When it already thinks it exists And the hand pick flowers And the soul takes no notice.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Flower, Sadness, Thinking

  Fernando Pessoa, Edwin Honig, Susan M. Brown (1998). “Poems of Fernando Pessoa”, p.9, City Lights Books

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• What has happened to us has happened to everyone or only to us; if to everyone, then it's no novelty, and if only to us, then it won't be understood.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Book, Novelty, Understood

  "The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa".

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• I look for myself but find no one. I belong to the chrysanthemum hour of bright flowers placed in tall vases. I should make an ornament of my soul.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Flower, Soul, Ornaments

  Fernando Pessoa (2010). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.134, Profile Books

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• The house clock, place certain there at the bottom of things, strikes the half hour dry and null. All is so much, all is so deep, all is so dark and cold!

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dark, House, Null

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa (1982). Translated by Richard Zenith, p. 60, 2006.

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• There are those that even God exploits, and they are prophets and saints in the vacuousness of the world.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Saint, World, Prophet

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p. 45, 1982.

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• Giving importance to what we think because we thought it, taking our own selves not only (to quote the Greek philosopher) as the measure of all things but as their norm or standard, we create in ourselves, if not an interpretation, at least a criticism of the universe, which we don't even know and therefore cannot criticize. The giddiest, most weak-minded of us then promote that criticism to an interpretation that's superimposed, like a hallucination; induced rather than deduced. It's a hallucination in the strict sense, being an illusion based on something only dimly seen.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Thinking, Self, Giving

  Fernando Pessoa (2005). “The Education of the Stoic: The Only Manuscript of the Baron of Teive”

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• We may know that the work we continue to put off doing will be bad. Worse, however, is the work we never do. A work that’s finished is at least finished. It may be poor, but it exists, like the miserable plant in the lone flowerpot of my neighbour who’s crippled. That plant is her happiness, and sometimes it’s even mine. What I write, bad as it is, may provide some hurt or sad soul a few moments of distraction from something worse. That’s enough for me, or it isn’t enough, but it serves some purpose, and so it is with all of life.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Hurt, Writing, Soul

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• Should you ask me if I'm happy, I'll answer that I'm not.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Answers, Should, Ask Me

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.81, Penguin UK

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• To think is to destroy.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Thinking

  Fernando Pessoa (1996). “The Book of Disquietude: By Bernardo Soares, Assistant Bookkeeper in the City of Lisbon”

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• There's something vile (and all the more vile because ridiculous) in the tendency of feeble men to make universal tragedies out of the sad comedies of their private woes.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Men, Tragedy, Woe

  Fernando Pessoa (2005). “The Education of the Stoic: The Only Manuscript of the Baron of Teive”

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• What is a disease is wishing with an equal intensity what is needed and what is desirable, and suffer for not being perfect as you would suffer for not having bread. The romantic error is this wanting the moon as if there was a way to get it.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Moon, Errors, Perfect

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p.77, 1982.

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• 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.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Hands, Dreamer, Ironic

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.201, Penguin UK

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• Time, which grays hair and wrinkles faces, also withers violent affections, and much more quickly.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Wrinkles, Hair, Faces

  Fernando Pessoa (2007). “The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa”, p.176, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• On the road halfway between faith and criticism stands the inn of reason. Reason is faith in what can be understood without faith, but it's still a faith, since to understand presupposes that there's something understandable.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Philosophical, Criticism, Reason

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.169, Penguin UK

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