The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro Quotes

“What comes, when it comes, will be what it is.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“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, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“I’d like to have enough time and quiet
To think about absolutely nothing,
To not ever feel myself living,
To only know myself in others’ eyes, reflected.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“Accept the universe
As the gods gave it to you.
If the gods wanted to give you something else
They’d have done it.

If there are other matters and other worlds
There are.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“She’s a manner of speaking.
Even the flowers don’t come back, or the green leaves.
There are new flowers, new green leaves.
There are other beautiful days.
Nothing comes back, nothing repeats itself, because everything is real.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“If I knew I was going to die tomorrow,
And Spring came the day after tomorrow,
I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow.
If that’s its time, when else should it come?
I like it that everything is real and everything is right;
And I like that it would be like this even if I didn’t like it.
And so, if I die now, I die peacefully
Because everything is real and everything is right.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“I'm one of my sensations.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“And I find a happiness in the fact of accepting —
In the sublimely scientific and difficult fact of accepting the inevitable natural.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“I’m in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren’t, either.
Nobody goes faster than the legs they have.
If where I want to go is far away, I’m not there in an instant.

(6/20/1919)”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“Live, you say, in the present;
Live only in the present.

But I don’t want the present, I want reality;
I want things that exist, not time that measures them.

What is the present?
It’s something relative to the past and the future.
It’s a thing that exists in virtue of other things existing.
I only want reality, things without the present.

I don’t want to include time in my scheme.
I don’t want to think about things as present; I want to think of them as things.
I don’t want to separate them from themselves, treating them as present.

I shouldn’t even treat them as real.
I should treat them as nothing.

I should see them, only see them;
See them till I can’t think about them.

See them without time, without space,
To see, dispensing with everything but what you see.
And this is the science of seeing, which isn’t a science.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“I’m glad I see with my eyes and not the pages I’ve read.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“Pouco me importa.
Pouco me importa o quê?
Não sei: pouco me importa.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poemas completos de Alberto Caeiro

“I’m in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren’t, either.
Nobody goes faster than the legs they have.
If where I want to go is far away, I’m not there in an instant.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“Other times when I hear the wind blow
I feel that just hearing the wind blow makes it worth being born.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“Night doesn’t fall for my eyes
But my idea of the night is that it falls for my eyes.
Beyond my thinking and having any thoughts
The night falls concretely
And the shining of stars exists like it had weight.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“Sinto uma alegria enorme
Ao pensar que a minha morte não tem importância nenhuma.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“And since today’s all there is for now, that’s everything.
Who knows if I’ll be dead the day after tomorrow?
If I’m dead the day after tomorrow, the thunderstorm day after tomorrow
Will be another thunderstorm than if I hadn’t died.
Of course I know thunderstorms don’t fall because I see them,
But if I weren’t in the world,
The world would be different —
There would be me the less —
And the thunderstorm would fall on a different world and would be another thunderstorm.
No matter what happens, what’s falling is what’ll be falling when it falls.

(7/10/1930)”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“I love flowers for being flowers, directly.
And I love trees for being trees without my thought.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“On a whitely cloudy day I get sad, almost afraid,
And I begin to meditate about problems I make up.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“Water’s water and that’s why it’s beautiful.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“If I die very young, hear this:
I was never anything but a kid playing.
I was a heathen like the sun and the water,
I had the universal religion only people don’t have.
I was happy because I didn’t ask for anything at all,
Or tried to find anything,
And I didn’t find any more explanation
Than the word explanation having no meaning at all.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“He should be happy because he can think about the unhappiness of others!
He’s stupid if he doesn’t know other people’s unhappiness is theirs,
And isn’t cured from the outside,
Because suffering isn’t like running out of ink,
Or a trunk not having iron bands!

There being injustice is like there being death.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“Todo o mal do mundo vem de nos importarmos uns com os outros,   
Quer para fazer bem, quer para fazer mal.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poemas completos de Alberto Caeiro

“O meu misticismo é não querer saber.
É viver e não pensar nisso.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poemas completos de Alberto Caeiro

“A beleza é o nome de qualquer cousa que não existe
Que eu dou às cousas em troca do agrado que me dão.
Não significa nada.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poemas completos de Alberto Caeiro

“Amar é a eterna inocência,
E a única inocência não pensar...”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poemas completos de Alberto Caeiro

“What does a river know about this and what does a tree know?
And I, who am no more than those, what do I know?
Every time I look at things and think about what men think about them,
I laugh like how a brook sounds cool on a stone.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“Sim, eis o que os meus sentidos aprenderam sozinhos:
— As cousas não têm significação: têm existência.
As cousas são o único sentido oculto das cousas.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poemas completos de Alberto Caeiro

“Pensar uma flor é vê-la e cheirá-la
E comer um fruto é saber-lhe o sentido.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poemas completos de Alberto Caeiro

“O único sentido íntimo das cousas
É elas não terem sentido íntimo nenhum.  ”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poemas completos de Alberto Caeiro