quotes by Fernando Pessoa

"No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it"
— Fernando Pessoa

"I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect"
— Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet)

"There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful."
— Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet)

"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

"Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life."
— Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet)

"My past is everything I failed to be."
— Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet)

"Não sou nada.
Nunca serei nada.
Não posso querer ser nada.
À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo."
— Fernando Pessoa

"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

"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 (Libro del desasosiego)

"My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while. […]. I'm two, and both keep their distance — Siamese twins that aren't attached.

From, The Book of Disquiet



"
— Fernando Pessoa

"Mar Português

Ó mar salgado, quanto do teu sal
São lágrimas de Portugal!
Por te cruzarmos, quantas mães choraram,
Quantos filhos em vão rezaram!

Quantas noivas ficaram por casar
Para que fosses nosso, ó mar!
Valeu a pena? Tudo vale a pena
Se a alma não é pequena.

Quem quere passar além do Bojador
Tem que passar além da dor.
Deus ao mar o perigo e o abismo deu,
Mas nele é que espelhou o céu."
— Fernando Pessoa

"...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 (The Book of Disquiet)

"Há um tempo em que é preciso abandonar as roupas usadas, que já tem a forma do nosso corpo, e esquecer os nossos caminhos, que nos levam sempre aos mesmos lugares. É o tempo da travessia: e, se não ousarmos fazê-la, teremos ficado, para sempre, à margem de nós mesmos."
— Fernando Pessoa

"Every gesture is a revolutionary act. "
— Fernando Pessoa

"The value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. That is why there are unforgettable moments and unique people!"
— Fernando Pessoa

"We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin."
— Fernando Pessoa

"Tudo vale a pena quando a alma não é pequena"
— Fernando Pessoa

"To live is to be someone else. Feeling is impossible if we feel today as we felt yesterday: to feel today the same thing we felt yesterday is not to feel at all--it's merely to remember today what we felt yesterday, since today we are the living cadaver of yesterday's lost life."
— Fernando Pessoa

"Tenho amigos para saber quem eu sou."
— Fernando Pessoa

"O poeta é um fingidor.
Finge tão completamente
Que chega a fingir que é dor
A dor que deveras sente."
— Fernando Pessoa

"Tenho sonhado mais que o que Napoleão fez.
Tenho apertado ao peito hipotético mais humanidades do que Cristo,
Tenho feito filosofias em segredo que nenhum Kant escreveu.
Mas sou, e talvez serei sempre, o da mansarda,
Ainda que não more nela;
Serei sempre... o que não nasceu para isso;
Serei sempre... só o que tinha qualidades;
Serei sempre o que esperou que lhe abrissem a porta ao pé de uma parede sem porta,
E cantou a cantiga do Infinito numa capoeira,
E ouviu a voz de Deus num poço tapado.
Crer em mim? Não, nem em nada."
— Fernando Pessoa

"My hapless peers with their lofty dreams--how I envy and despise them! I'm with the others, the even more hapless, who have no-one but themselves to whom they can tell their dreams and show what would be verses if they wrote them. I'm with those poor slobs who have no books to show, who have no literature beside their own soul, and who are suffocating to death due to the fact that they exist without having taken that mysterious, transcendental exam that makes one eligible to live."
— Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet)

"If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.

From, The Book of Disquiet
"
— Fernando Pessoa

"En mi corazón hay una paz de angustia, y mi sosiego está hecho de resignación."
— Fernando Pessoa (Libro del desasosiego)

"Nunca amamos a nadie: amamos, sólo, la idea que tenemos de alguien. Lo que amamos es un concepto nuestro, es decir, a nosotros mismos."
— Fernando Pessoa

"Stones in the road? I save every single one, one day I´ll build a castle"
— Fernando Pessoa

"Each of us is several, is many,is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings is not the same as the self who suffers or takes joy in them. In the vast colony of our being there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways. Livro Do Desassossego"
— Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquietude by Bernardo Soares, assistant bookkeeper in the City of Lisbon)

"Triste de quem é feliz !
Vive porque a vida dura.
Nada na alma lhe diz
Mais que a lição da raiz
Ter por vida a sepultura."
— Fernando Pessoa (Mensagem)

"Time, which grays hair and wrinkles faces, also withers violent affections, and much more quickly."
— Fernando Pessoa (The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa)

"I'm always horrified whenever I finish anything. Horrified and desolate. My instinct for perfection should inhibit me from ever finishing anything; it should in fact inhibit me from ever beginning. But I become distracted and do things. My accomplishments are not the product of my applied will but a giving away of my will. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have soul enough to stop things. This book is my cowardice. ~The Book of Disquiet"
— Fernando Pessoa

"THIRD WATCHER Let her speak. Don't interrupt. She knows words that mermaids taught her...I'm falling asleep in order to hear her...Go on, sister, go on...My heart aches because I wasn't you when you dreamed at the seashore..."
— Fernando Pessoa (The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa)

"Se depois de eu morrer, quiserem escrever a minha biografia, não há nada mais simples. Têm só duas datas: a da minha nascença e a da minha morte. Entre uma e outra coisa, todos os dias são meus"
— Fernando Pessoa (POEMAS COMPLETOS DE ALBERTO CAEIRO)

"Escravos cardíacos das estrelas,
Conquistámos todo o mundo antes de nos levantar da cama;
Mas acordámos e ele é opaco,
Levantámo-nos e ele é alheio,
Saímos de casa e ele é a terra inteira,
Mais o sistema solar e a Via Láctea e o Indefinido."
— Fernando Pessoa

"Se te é impossível viver só, nasceste escravo."
— Fernando Pessoa

"I had the same sensation as when we watch someone sleep. When asleep we all become children again. Perhaps because in the state of slumber we can do no wrong and are unconscious of life, the greatest criminal and most self- absorbed egotist are holy, by a natural magic, as long as they're sleeping. For me there's no discernible difference between killing a child and killing a sleeping man.

"
— Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet)

"What Hells and Purgatories and Heavens I have inside of me! But who sees me do anything that disagrees with life--me, so calm and peaceful?"
— Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet)

"Und so schleppe ich mein Leben damit hin, das zu tun, was ich nicht will, und das zu erträumen, was ich nicht haben kann, absurd wie eine stehen-gebliebene öffentliche Uhr. Nur die zarte, aber feste Sensibilität, der lange, aber vollauf bewusste Traum, bilden in ihrer Gesamtheit mein Halbschattenprivileg."
— Fernando Pessoa

"Ich bin der Zwischenraum zwischen dem, was ich bin, und dem, was ich nicht bin, zwischen dem, was ich träume, und dem, was das Leben aus mir gemacht hat, der abstrakte und leibliche Mittelwert zwischen Dingen, die nichts sind, da ich ebenfalls nichts bin. Welche Unruhe, wenn ich fühle, welch Unbehagen, wenn ich denke, welche Nutzlosigkeit, wenn ich will!"
— Fernando Pessoa

""Sem a loucura que é o homem
Mais que a besta sadia,
Cadáver adiado que procria?"

"O sonho é ver as formas invisíveis
Da distância imprecisa, e, com sensíveis
Movimentos da esp'rança e da vontade,
Buscar na linha fria do horizonte
A árvore, a praia, a flor, a ave, a fonte -
Os beijos merecidos da Verdade. "

"(...)Tudo vale a pena
Se a alma não é pequena.
Quem quere passar além do Bojador
Tem que passar além da dor. "

"Triste de quem é feliz!
Vive porque a vida dura.
Nada na alma lhe diz
Mais que a lição da raiz -
Ter por vida a sepultura."

"Ser descontente é ser homem. "

"Tenho meus olhos quentes de água. "

"'Screvo meu livro à beira-mágoa. "

"Quando, meu Sonho e meu Senhor?""
— Fernando Pessoa (Mensagem: Poemas esotéricos : edição crítica)

"Lezten Endes bleibt von diesem Tage das, was vom gestrigen blieb und vom morgigen bleiben wird: die unersättliche und nicht zählbare Begierde, immer derselbe und ein anderer zu sein."
— Fernando Pessoa

"Alles ist so vergeblich wie ein Herumstochern in Asche und so vage wie der Augenblick, bevor der Morgen graut. Und das Licht fällt so vollkommen und heiter auf die Dinge, vergoldet sie so prächtig mit traurig lächelnder Wirklichkeit! Das ganze Mysterium der Welt kommt herab zu mir, bis es vor meinen Augen Banalität und Straße wird. Wie sich doch Alltag und Geheimnis berühren in unserer unmittelbaren Nähe! Hier, an der lichten Oberfläche dieses vielschichtigen menschlichen Lebens, lächelt die Zeit ungewiss auf den Lippen des Mysteriums! Wie modern dies alles klingt! Und im Grunde so alt, so geheimnisvoll, mit einem so anderen Sinn behaftet als dem, der in all dem leuchtet!"
— Fernando Pessoa

"Ich bin es müde, geträumt zu haben, freilich nicht müde zu träumen."
— Fernando Pessoa

"What can I expect from myself? My sensation in all their horrible acuity, and a profound awareness of feeling. A sharp mind that only destroys me, and an unusual capacity for dreaming to keep me entertained. A dead will and a reflection that cradles it, like a living child.

From, The Book of Disquiet


"
— Fernando Pessoa

"Tenho amigos para saber quem eu sou."
— Fernando Pessoa

"FIRST WATCHER Why do people die?
SECOND WATCHER Perhaps because they don't dream enough..."
— Fernando Pessoa (The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa)

"Güte ist das Feingefühl roher Seelen."
— Fernando Pessoa

"I'd like to write the encomium of a new incoherence that could serve as the negative charter for the new anarchy of souls."
— Fernando Pessoa

"tudo vale apena quando a alma nao é pequena "
— Fernando Pessoa (Poemas de Álvaro de Campos. II. Tabaquería y otros poemas con fecha)

"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

"Ese episodio de la imaginación al que llamamos realidad"
— Fernando Pessoa