The Book of Disquiet

by Fernando Pessoa

I see life as a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up.

I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me. A nearby field, a ray of sunlight, a little bit of calm along with a bit of bread, not to feel oppressed by the knowledge that I exist, not to demand anything from others, and not to have others demand anything from me – this was denied me, like the spare change we might deny a beggar not because we’re mean-hearted but because we don’t feel like unbuttoning our coat.

Work and repose coexisted, and I had nothing to do. I’d woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.

The landscape, admirable as a picture, rarely makes a comfortable bed.

Romantic love is a rarefied product of century after century of Christian influence, and everything about its substance and development can be explained to the unenlightened by comparing it to a suit fashioned by the soul or the imagination and used to clothe those whom the mind thinks it fits, when they happen to come along. But every suit, since it isn’t eternal, lasts as long as it lasts; and soon, under the fraying clothes of the ideal we’ve formed, the real body of the person we dressed it in shows through.