The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition

by Fernando Pessoa

I have lived so much without ever having lived. I have thought so much without ever having thought. I feel weighed down by worlds of unenacted violence, of stillborn adventures. I am sick of what I never had nor will have, weary of gods always just about to exist. I bear on my body the wounds of all the battles I did not fight. My muscles are weary from efforts I never even considered making.

Living mentally on what is not and cannot be, we are, in the end, unable even to ponder what might really be.

I just feel sorry that I don’t know how to be someone who feels sorry.

No one can be king of the world except in dreams. And, if we are honest, each of us wants to be king of the world.

Whatever we renounce we preserve intact in our dreams,

A belief in God exists in every healthy mind, but not a belief in a definite God.

The same certainty and the same vagueness surround the survival of the soul. We all know that we will die; we all feel that we will not.

I was more of a genius in dreams than in life.

I hesitate before doing anything, often without knowing why.

If you cannot live alone, then you were born a slave.

Death is a liberation because to die is to need no one else.