Fernando Pessoa and Co. Quotes

“Be what I think? But I think of being so many things!”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems

“أنا أرثي حال النجوم
التي تشع منذ هذا القدر الكبير من السنين
هذا القدر من السنين ...
أنا أرثي حال النجوم.
أليس هناك أيّ تعب
في الأشياء،
في جميع الأشياء ،
مثل تعب السيقان والمناكب ؟
التعب من الكينونة،
من الوجود،
من الوجود لا غير،
الالتماع المرح أو الكئيب ...
ألا يكون الانتظار في النهاية
لكل وجود
وليس الموت، بل شيء آخر
كما لو أنه نهاية أخرى ؟
أو تبرير عظيم،
شيء شبيه
بالغفران ؟”
― Fernando Pessoa, مختارات فرناندو بيسوا

“العالم مخلوق لمن ولدوا كي يمتلكوه
لا لمن يحلم بأنه قادر على امتلاكه ،
ولو كان على صواب
لقد حلمت بأكثر مما حلم به نابليون نفسه
ضممت إلى صدري المفترض إنسانيات
أكثر مما ضم المسيح
شيدت في السر فلسفات أكثر من كل ما كتب أي كانط.
لكن كنت وسأكون دائماً مجرد ساكن غرفة في سطح
ولو لم أعش فيھا..
سأبقى دائماً من لم يُخلق لذلك”
― Fernando Pessoa, مختارات فرناندو بيسوا

“ربما في يوم،
في ما وراء الأيام،
تعثر على ما تُريد لأنك تُريده.”
― Fernando Pessoa, مختارات فرناندو بيسوا

“Ah, the freshness in the face of leaving a task undone!
To be remiss is to be positively out in the country!
What a refuge it is to be completely unreliable!
I can breathe easier now that the appointments are behind me.
I missed them all, through deliberate negligence,
Having waited for the urge to go, which I knew wouldn’t come.
I’m free, and against organized, clothed society.
I’m naked and plunge into the water of my imagination.
It’s too late to be at either of the two meetings where I should have been at the same time,
Deliberately at the same time...
No matter, I’ll stay here dreaming verses and smiling in italics.
This spectator aspect of life is so amusing!
I can’t even light the next cigarette... If it’s an action,
It can wait for me, along with the others, in the nonmeeting called life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems

“I don’t know what understanding myself is. I don’t look inside.
I don’t believe I exist behind myself.”
― Alberto Caeiro, Selected Poems (By Fernando Pessoa)

“Everything’s different from us. That’s why everything exists.”
― Alberto Caeiro, Selected Poems (By Fernando Pessoa)

“لو أكون مضبوطاً تماماً مثل آلة!
لو أمضي ظافراً عبر الحياة”
― Fernando Pessoa, مختارات فرناندو بيسوا

“يولد الله . الآخرون يفنون. كلمة الحق
لم تأت ولم تذهب : وما تغيّر
هو الخطأ. لدينا أبدية جديدة،
وفي الأخير يكون ما ولى هو الأحسن.
العِلم الأعمى، ما يحرث هذه الأرض اليباب.
الإيمان الأحمق، يحيا بالحلم عن عبادته.
الرب الجديد محض كلمة جديدة أخرى.
لا تبحثْ ولا تؤمنْ : الظلام يغطي كل شيء.”
― فرناندو پسوا, مختارات فرناندو بيسوا

“Let’s only care about the place where we are.
There’s beauty enough in being here and not anywhere else.
If there’s someone beyond the curve in the road,
Let them worry about what’s past the curve in the road,
That’s what the road is to them.”
― Alberto Caeiro, Selected Poems (By Fernando Pessoa)

“There are dreamed anguishes that are more real
Than the ones life brings us, there are sensations
Felt only by imagining
Which are more ours than our own life is.
There’s so often a thing which, not existing,
Does exist, exists lingeringly
And lingeringly is ours and us…”
― Fernando Pessoa, Selected Poems

“I’m nothing. I’ll always be nothing. I can’t want to be something. But I have in me all the dreams of the world.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“I’ll always be the one who waited for a door to open in a wall without doors”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“With Destiny driving the wagon of everything down the road of nothing.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“What matters is to know how to see,
To know how to see without thinking,
To know how to see when seeing
And not think when seeing
Nor see when thinking.
But this (if only we didn’t have a dressed-up heart!) —
This requires deep study,
Lessons in unlearning,
And a retreat into the freedom of that convent
Where the stars—say poets—are the eternal nuns
And the flowers the contrite believers of just one day,
But where after all the stars are just stars
And the flowers just flowers,
Which is why we call them stars and flowers.


from
THE KEEPER OF SHEEP (13 MARCH 1914)”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems

“But if God is the flowers and trees And hills and sun and moon, Then why should I call him God? I’ll call him flowers and trees and hills and sun and moon.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“SOLEMNLY OVER THE FERTILE LAND Solemnly over the fertile land The brief and futile white cloud passes, And for a black instant the fields are touched By a cold breeze. So too in my soul the slow thought soars And darkens my mind, but I, like the field That returns to itself, return to the day, The surface of life. 31 MAY 1927”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“I have in me like a haze
Which holds and which is nothing
A nostalgia for nothing at all,
The desire for something vague.

— Fernando Pessoa, opening lines to “[I have in me like a haze],” trans. Richard Zenith, Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems (Grove Press, 1998)”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems

“Nothing needs to be done
On the eve of never departing.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“Love, glory, and wealth are prisons.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“And all religions put together teach no more than the candy shop.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“Insane asylums are full of lunatics with certainties!”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“I failed in everything.
Since I had no ambition, perhaps I failed in nothing.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“The everyday external things of the one who died”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“the prehistoric irresponsibility of the eternal waters.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“The restless anguish of regrets,
The weariness caused by so much futility,
The surfeit even of imagined things,”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“I’M HELD by nothing, I hold on to nothing, I belong to nothing.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“Want little: you’ll have everything.
Want nothing: you’ll be free.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“Wise is the one who does not seek.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“It’s good to live alone,
And noble and great
Always to live simply.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems