The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa Quotes

“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

“FIRST WATCHER Why do people die?
SECOND WATCHER Perhaps because they don't dream enough...”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa

“الحزين لا ينام يسهر ليجد الفرح.”
― Fernando Pessoa, مختارات فرناندو بيسوا

“Time, which grays hair and wrinkles faces, also withers violent affections, and much more quickly.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa

“هكذا أكتب، بشكل جيد أو رديء،
مصيباً فيما يسعى إليه قولي
أو مخطئاً، أتعثر هنا، أنهض هناك،
مواصلاً طريقي، طريق أعمى عنيد.”
― Fernando Pessoa, مختارات فرناندو بيسوا

“ريح خفيفة جداً تهبُّ
ثم تَمرُّ،
دائماً خفيفة جداً
و أنا لا أعرف فيم أفكر
و لا أسعى إلى أن أعرف.”
― Fernando Pessoa, مختارات فرناندو بيسوا

“The Complete Work is essentially dramatic, thought it takes different forms - prose passages in this first volume, poems and philosophies in other volumes. It's the product of the temperament I've been blessed or cursed with - I'm not sure which. All I know is that the author of these lines (I'm not sure if also of these books) has never had just one personality, and has never thought or felt except dramatically - that is, through invented persons, or personalities, who are more capable than he of feeling what's to be felt.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa

“The nobleman thinks clearly, writes clearly, and controls his emotions, though not his feelings; the bookkeeper controls neither emotions nor feelings, and what he thinks depends on what he feels.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Selected Prose

“The astonishing reality of things,
Is my discovery every day,
Each thing is what it is,
And it's hard to explain to someone how happy this makes me,
And how much this suffices me.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa

“and I weep over a dead life that I carry inside me and never lived.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa

“I weep over a dead life that I carry inside me and never lived.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa

“Let’s stop talking. The effort you make to talk tires me out...
The gap between what you think and what you say grieves me ... I can
feel in my skin my consciousness floating on the surface of my
sensations’ terrified stupor. I don’t know what that means, but it’s what I
feel ... I need to say longish, confusing sentences that are hard to say ...
Doesn’t all of this feel to you like a huge spider that between us is
weaving, from soul to soul, a black web we can’t escape?”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa