Pessoa Quotes

I don't believe in the landscape. — Fernando Pessoa

If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant. — Fernando Pessoa

I created myself, echo and abyss, by thinking. I multiplied myself by going deeply into myself ... — Fernando Pessoa

But do we really live? To live without knowing what life is - is that living? — Fernando Pessoa

One never lives so intensely as when one has been thinking hard. — Fernando Pessoa

The rustic, the reader of novels, the pure ascetic: these three are truly happy men — Fernando Pessoa

Give to each emotion a personality, to each state of mind a soul. — Fernando Pessoa

I carry my awareness of defeat like a banner of victory. — Fernando Pessoa

I'm so cold, so weary in my abandonment. Go and find my Mother, O Wind. — Fernando Pessoa

I'm liberated and lost.
I feel. I shiver with fever. I'm I. — Fernando Pessoa

In any spirit that isn't deformed there is the belief in God. In any spirit that is not deformed there isn't the belief in a particular God. — Fernando Pessoa

I don't have enough money to be a dreamer. — Fernando Pessoa

I seek and don't find myself. I belong to chrysanthemum hours, neatly lined up in flowerpots. — Fernando Pessoa

It's been a long time since I've been me. — Fernando Pessoa

My soul's the present shadow of a presence gone. — Fernando Pessoa

My worthless self lives on at the bottom of every expression, like an indissoluble residue at the bottom of a glass from which only water was drunk. — Fernando Pessoa

I do not evolve, I simply journey. — Fernando Pessoa

This world is for those who are born to conquer it, Not for those who dream that are able to conquer it, even if they're right. — Fernando Pessoa

Civilization consists in giving something a name that doesn't belong to it and then dreaming over the result. — Fernando Pessoa

Metaphysics has always struck me as a prolonged form of latent insanity. — Fernando Pessoa

Having never discovered qualities in myself that might attract someone else, I could never believe that anyone felt attracted to me. — Fernando Pessoa

Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions. — Fernando Pessoa

For who expects nothing, all that comes is grateful — Fernando Pessoa

Life is full of paradoxes, as roses are of thorns. — Fernando Pessoa

In order to understand, I destroyed myself. — Fernando Pessoa

I'd like to be in the country so that I'd could like being in the city. — Fernando Pessoa

I suppose no one truly admits the existence of another person. — Fernando Pessoa

Life hurls us like a stone, and we sail through the air saying, look at me move. — Fernando Pessoa

I come closer to my desk as to a bulwark against life. — Fernando Pessoa

From so much self-revising, I've destroyed myself. From so much self-thinking, I'm now my thoughts and not I — Fernando Pessoa

Yes, everything's just fine.
It's all perfectly fine.
Except for one thing: it's all screwed up. — Fernando Pessoa

To possess something is to lose it. To feel something without possessing it is to keep it, because in that way one extracts its essence. — Fernando Pessoa

What's most worthless about dreams is that everybody has them. — Fernando Pessoa

Art consists in making others feel what we feel. — Fernando Pessoa

Blessed are those who entrust their lives to no one. — Fernando Pessoa

I'm sick of everything, and of the everythingness of everything. — Fernando Pessoa

I loathe the happiness of all these people who don't know they're unhappy. — Pessoa, Fernando

Life is a thread that someone entangled. — Fernando Pessoa

To think is to destroy. — Fernando Pessoa

It's in an inland sea that the river of my life ended. — Fernando Pessoa

The value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. That is why there are unforgettable moments and unique people! — Fernando Pessoa

Time, which grays hair and wrinkles faces, also withers violent affections, and much more quickly. — Fernando Pessoa

Look, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates. — Fernando Pessoa

It is noble to be shy, illustrious not to know how to act, great not to have a gift for living. — Fernando Pessoa

My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt. — Fernando Pessoa

I was more of a genius in dreams than life. That is my tragedy. — Fernando Pessoa

You breathe better when you're rich. — Fernando Pessoa

I sleep and unsleep. — Fernando Pessoa

I know nothing and my heart aches — Fernando Pessoa

Isn't joyful or painful this pain in which I rejoice — Fernando Pessoa

Strength without agility is a mere mass. — Fernando Pessoa

The painful intensity of my sensations, even when they're happy ones; the blissful intensity of my sensations, even when they're sad. — Fernando Pessoa

I want to be a work of art, at least in my soul, since I can't be one in my body. — Fernando Pessoa

The letters from the ink in my pen are an absurd map of magic signs. — Fernando Pessoa

I forget. I don't see. I don't think. — Fernando Pessoa

Pg 9, The consciousness of life's unconsciousness is the oldest tax levied on the intelligence. — Fernando Pessoa

Whether or not they exist we are slaves to our gods. — Fernando Pessoa

I enjoy wording. Words for me are tangible bodies, visible sirens, incarnate sensualities. — Fernando Pessoa

Life is whatever we conceive it to be. — Fernando Pessoa

Stones in the road? I save every single one, and one day I'll build a castle. — Fernando Pessoa

Yes, talking to people makes me sleepy. — Fernando Pessoa

To live is to not think. — Fernando Pessoa

I take comfort in these reflections, since I can't take comfort in life. — Fernando Pessoa

There's no regret more painful than the regret of things that never were. — Fernando Pessoa

By day they're full of meaningless activity; by night they're full of a meaningless lack of it. — Fernando Pessoa

The universe isn't mine: it's me. 139 — Fernando Pessoa

Destiny gave me only two things: a few accounting books and the gift of dreaming. — Fernando Pessoa

The divine fact of existing shouldn't be surrendered to the satanic fact of coexisting. — Fernando Pessoa

Pg.9 In my heart there's a peaceful anguish, and my calm is made of resignation. — Fernando Pessoa

By day I am nothing, by night I am I. — Fernando Pessoa

Caesar gave the ultimate definition of ambition when he said: 'Better to be the chief of a village than a subaltern in Rome'. — Fernando Pessoa

For valuing your own suffering sets on it the gold of a sun of pride. Suffering a lot can originate the illusion of being the Chosen of Pain. — Fernando Pessoa

Given that we cannot know all the elements in a problem, we never can solve it. — Fernando Pessoa

Wise is the man who monotonizes his existence, for then each minor incident seems a marvel. — Fernando Pessoa

The slope takes you to the windmill, but effort takes you nowhere. — Fernando Pessoa

My God, my God, whose performance am I watching? How many people am I? Who am I? What is this space between myself and myself? — Fernando Pessoa

Freedom would mean rest, artistic achievement, the intellectual fulfilment of my being. — Pessoa, Fernando

I will be what I want. But I will have to want what I'll be. Success is in having success, not conditions for success. — Fernando Pessoa

The end is low, like all quantitative ends, personal or not, and it can be attained and verified. — Fernando Pessoa

What happens to us either happens to everyone or only to us: in the first instance it's banal; in the second it's incomprehensible. — Fernando Pessoa

Ah! The anguish, the vile rage, the despair
Of not being able to express
With a shout, an extreme and bitter shout,
The bleeding of my heart. — Fernando Pessoa

I search and can't find myself. I belong in chrysanthemum time, sharp in calla lily elongations. God made my soul into an ornamental thing. — Fernando Pessoa

Let's absurdify life, from east to west.
Let us play hide-and-seek with our consciousness of living. — Fernando Pessoa

The world belongs to who doesn't feel. The primary condition to be a practical man is the absence of sensitivity. — Fernando Pessoa

I take with me the conscience of defeat as a victory banner. — Fernando Pessoa

But do my words ring in anyone else's soul? Does anyone hear them besides me? — Fernando Pessoa

I realize that I was all error and deviation, that I never lived, that I existed only in so far as I filled time with consciousness and thought. — Fernando Pessoa

My dreams are a stupid shelter, like an umbrella against lightning. — Fernando Pessoa

Only sterility is noble and dignified. Only killing what never was is elevated and perverse and absurd. — Fernando Pessoa

Sailing is necessary, living is not necessary. — Fernando Pessoa

When I write, I solemnly visit myself. — Fernando Pessoa

And as well as I dream, I reason if I want, for that's just another kind of dream. — Fernando Pessoa

Only when night comes do I feel, if not happiness, at least some kind of repose which I experience as contentment — Fernando Pessoa

Smell is a strange sight. It evokes sentimental landscapes through a sudden sketching of the subconscious. — Fernando Pessoa

I don't mourn the loss of my childhood; I mourn because everything, including (my) childhood, is lost. — Fernando Pessoa

I shall die as I have lived, surrounded by bric-a-brac, sold by weight among the postscripts added to lost things. — Fernando Pessoa

But if the Dream Kings were mine, what would I have to dream about? If I possessed the impossible landscapes, what would remain of the impossible? — Fernando Pessoa

In this calm and stupid life,
I never know how I should act. — Fernando Pessoa

To pretend is to know oneself. — Fernando Pessoa

We live by action - by acting on desire. Those of us who don't know how to want - whether geniuses or beggars - are related by impotence. — Fernando Pessoa