Fernando Pessoa Quotes - Page 4

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• And, like the great damned souls, I shall always feel that thinking is worth more than living.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Thinking, Soul, Feels

  14 Copy quote

• I always live in the present. I don’t know the future and no longer have the past. The former oppresses me as the possibility of everything, the latter as the reality of nothing.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Past, Reality, Possibility

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

  95 Copy quote

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

  Fernando Pessoa

  Want, Save Me

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

  9 Copy quote

• I realize that, while often happy and often cheerful, I am always sad.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Cheerful, Realizing

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

  12 Copy quote

• For a long time now I haven't existed. I'm utterly calm. No one distinguishes me from who I am. I just felt myself breath as if I'd done something new, or done it late. I'm beginning to be conscious of being conscious. Perhaps tomorrow I will wake up to myself and resume the course of my existence. I don't know if that will make more happy or less. I don't know anything.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Who I Am, Long, Wake Up

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

  5 Copy quote

• The end of lower art is to please, the end of average art is to raise the top, the end of superior art is to free.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Art, Average, Ends

  26 Copy quote

• To be understood is to prostitute oneself

  Fernando Pessoa

  Understood, Oneself

  Fernando Pessoa (2007). “The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa”, p.330, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• The beauty of a naked body is felt only by the dressed races.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Race, Naked, Body

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p.75, 1982.

  8 Copy quote

• 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.)

  Fernando Pessoa

  Betrayal, Love Is, Important

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

  27 Copy quote

• My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Stupid, Umbrella

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

  10 Copy quote

• Blessed are those who entrust their lives to no one.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Blessed, Blessed Are Those, Book Of Disquiet

  7 Copy quote

• And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else, and I fear it as nothing and as something else simultaneously, as if gross horror and non-existence could coincide there, as if my coffin could entrap the eternal breathing of a bodily soul, as if immortality could be tormented by confinement. The idea of hell, which only a satanic soul could have invented seems to me to have derived from this sort of confusion - a mixture of two different fears that contradict and contaminate each other.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Hate, Breathing, Ideas

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, number 168, 1982.

  34 Copy quote

• We are two abysses - a well staring at the sky.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Sky, Two, Abyss

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

  35 Copy quote

• 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.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Successful, Reality, Pieces

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.116, Penguin UK

  12 Copy quote

• I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Play, Actors, Empty

  Fernando Pessoa (2006). “A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems”, p.15, Penguin

  15 Copy quote

• Life is a thread that someone entangled.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Life Is, Thread

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

  7 Copy quote

• Everything is theater.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Theater

  Fernando Pessoa (2007). “The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa”, p.263, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  6 Copy quote

• Inch by inch I conquered the inner terrain I was born with. Bit by bit I reclaimed the swamp in which I'd languished. I gave birth to my infinite being, but I had to wrench myself out of me with forceps.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Swamps, Birth, Infinite

  32 Copy quote

• I'm a man for whom the outside world is an inner Reality.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Reality, Men, World

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p. 376, 1982.

  4 Copy quote

• Let us sculpt in hopeless silence all our dreams of speaking.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Silence, Hopeless

  11 Copy quote

• Give to each emotion a personality, to each state of mind a soul.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Giving, Personality, Soul

  Fernando Pessoa (2010). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.9, Profile Books

  4 Copy quote

• I am the escaped one, After I was born They locked me up inside me But I left. My soul seeks me, Through hills and valley, I hope my soul Never finds me.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Soul, Valleys, Hills

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Yesterday, Today, Remember

  24 Copy quote

• 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.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  "The Book of Disquiet".

  47 Copy quote

• A great emotion is too selfish ; it takes into itself all the blood of the spirit, and the congestion leaves the hands too cold to write. Three sorts of emotion produce great poetry - strong but quick emotions, seized upon for art as soon as they have passed, but not before they have passed ; strong and deep emotions in their remembrance along time after ; and false emotions, that is to say, emotions felt in the intellect. Not insincerity, but a translated sincerity, is the basis of all art.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Strong, Art, Selfish

  Fernando Pessoa (1988). “Always Astonished: Selected Prose”, p.53, City Lights Books

  6 Copy quote

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