Fernando Pessoa Quotes - Page 9

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• I walk along a street and see in the faces of the passersby not the expression they really have but the expression they would have for me if they knew about my life and how I am, if I carried, transparent in my gestures and my face, the ridiculous, timid abnormality of my soul.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Expression, Soul, Gestures

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• When one of my Japanese teacups is broken, I imagine that the real cause was not the careless hand of a maid but the anxieties of the figures inhabiting the curves of that porcelain. Their grim decision to commit suicide doesn't shock me: they used the maid as one of us might use a gun.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Suicide, Real, Gun

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• But I am not perfect in my way of putting things Because I lack the divine simplicity Of being only what I appear to be.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Perfect, Simplicity, Way

  Fernando Pessoa (1971). “Selected poems by Fernando Pessoa: including poems by his heteronyms: Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis [and] Alvaro de Campos, as well as some of his English sonnets and selections from his letters”

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• Having touched Christ's feet is not an excuse for punctuation mistakes.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Mistake, Feet, Punctuation

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, "A Factless Autobiography", Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, 2006, p 229, 1982.

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• What's given, in fact, always depends on the person or thing it's given to. A minor incident in the street brings the cook to the door and entertains him more than I would be entertained by contemplating the most original idea, by reading the greatest book, or by having the most gratifying of useless dreams. If life is basically monotony, he has escaped it more than I. And he escapes it more easily than I. The truth isn't with him or with me, because it isn't with anyone, but happiness does belong to him.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Reading, Book

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• When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Witty, Clever

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.69, Penguin UK

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• Faithful to the word given and the idea had.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Ideas, Faithful, Given

  "Message". Book by Fernando Pessoa, Poem "D. Pedro", Verses 11-12, 1934.

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• And I have the others in me. Even when I’m far away from them, I am forced to live with them. Even when I’m all alone, crowds surround me. I have no place to flee to, unless I were to flee from myself.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Crowds, Far Away, All Alone

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• There's no greater tragedy than an equal intensity, in the same soul or the same man, of the intellectual sentiment and the moral sentiment. For a man to be utterly and absolutely moral, he has to be a bit stupid. For a man to be absolutely intellectual, he has to be a bit immoral.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Stupid, Men, Soul

  Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith (2002). “The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa”, p.302, Grove Press

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• To say! To know how to say! To know how to exist via the written voice and the intellectual image! This is all that matters in life; the rest is men and women, imagined loves and factitious vanities, the wiles of our digestion and forgetfulness, people squirming — like worms when a rock is lifted — under the huge abstract boulder of the meaningless blue sky.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Love, Men, Vanity

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• Myth is the nothing that is all.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Myth

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• Given that we cannot know all the elements in a problem, we never can solve it.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Elements, Problem, Given

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p.282, 1982.

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• I was a poet animated by philosophy, not a philosopher with poetic faculties.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Philosophy, Philosopher, Poetic

  Fernando Pessoa (2007). “The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa”, p.35, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Your poems are of interest to mankind; your liver isn't. Drink till you write well and feel sick. Bless your poems and be damned to you.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Writing, Sick, Drink

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa (1982). Translated by Richard Zenith, p. 229, 2006.

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• I Know, I Alone I know, I alone How much it hurts, this heart With no faith nor law Nor melody nor thought. Only I, only I And none of this can I say Because feeling is like the sky - Seen, nothing in it to see.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Hurt, Heart, Law

  Fernando Pessoa (1974). “Selected Poems”

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• Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what's in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been in the text, but there's always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Men, Doubt, Gist

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

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• To think is to destroy. The very process of thought indicates it for the same thought, as thinking is decomposing.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Thinking, Process

  "A Factless Autobiography". Book by Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, 2006.

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• I take with me the conscience of defeat as a victory banner.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Victory, Defeat, Banner

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p. 79, 1982.

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• I enjoy wording. Words for me are tangible bodies, visible sirens, incarnate sensualities.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Sirens, Body, Tangible

  Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith (1996). “Book of Disquietude”, Carcanet Press Limited

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• I sometimes think, with a sad delight, that if one day, in a future I no longer belong to, these sentences, that I write, last with praise, I will at last have the people who understand me, those mine, the true family to be born in and be loved... I will only be understood in effigy, when affection no longer repays the dead the unaffection that was, when living.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Writing, Thinking, People

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p. 182, 1982.

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• What is art but the denial of life?

  Fernando Pessoa

  Art, Denial

  Fernando Pessoa (2017). “The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition”, p.373, New Directions Publishing

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• I never go to where's a risk. I'm frightened of dangers down to boredom.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Fear, Boredom, Risk

  "A Factless Autobiography". Book by Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, p. 96, 2006.

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• 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.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Writing, Two, People

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• Sailing is necessary, living is not necessary.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Sailing

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, pp. 133, 262, 1982.

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• Never having discovered qualities in myself which could attract someone else, I could never believe that anyone felt attracted to me.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Believe, Quality, Might

  "Book of Disquietude".

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