Book Of Disquiet Quotes - Page 2

• ...the painful intensity of my sensations, even when they're happy ones; the blissful intensity of my sensations, even when they're sad.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Painful, Intensity, Sensations

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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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• Through an experience that simultaneously involved my sensibility and intelligence, I realized early on that the imaginative life, however morbid it might seem, is the one that suits temperaments like mine. The fictions of my imagination (as it later developed) may weary me, but they don't hurt or humiliate. Impossible lovers can't cheat on us, or smile at us falsely, or be calculating in their caresses. They never forsake us, and they don't die or disappear. --The book of Disquiet

  Fernando Pessoa

  Hurt, Book, Imagination

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.155, Penguin UK

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• 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.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Opinion, Poet, Sells

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• I sometimes think that I enjoy suffering. But the truth is I would prefer something else.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Thinking, Suffering, Sometimes

  Fernando Pessoa (2010). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.190, Profile Books

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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

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• I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Reality, Found

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.276, Penguin UK

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• I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book. I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love. I'm a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breath life into me.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Book, Character

  Fernando Pessoa (2010). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.24, Profile Books

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

  Fernando Pessoa

  Stupid, Acceptance, Intelligent

  "The Book of Disquietude" by Fernando Pessoa, translated by Richard Zenith, (text 104), 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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• To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Thinking, Know Yourself, About Yourself

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• The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Heart, Mirrors, Inventor

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

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• Could it think, the heart would stop beating.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Heart, Thinking, Emotion

  Fernando Pessoa (2007). “The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa”, p.319, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• 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, Real, Sleep

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

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• I don't mourn the loss of my childhood; I mourn because everything, including (my) childhood, is lost.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Loss, Childhood, Lost

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.239, Penguin UK

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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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• 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”

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• I'm sick of everything, and of the everythingness of everything.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Sick

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

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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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• I am nothing. I'll never be anything. I couldn't want to be something. Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams in the world.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, World, Want

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• Should I be what I think? But I think about being so many things!

  Fernando Pessoa

  Thinking

  "The Collected Poems of Álvaro de Campos: 1928-1935".

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• The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Sleep, Essence, Desire

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

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• Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Sorry, Rainy Day, Funeral

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• Being tired of all illusions and of everything about illusions – the loss of illusions, the uselessness of having them, the prefatigue of having to have them in order to lose them, the sadness of having had them, the intellectual shame of having had them knowing that they would have to end this way.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Tired, Sadness, Loss

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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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