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Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa Quotes

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Famous Fernando Pessoa Quotes

“I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing; it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will's surrender. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.”

ThinkingShouldWritingBookAchieveProductsInstinctQuittingSurrenderCowardiceDistractedFinishingPerfectionistBook Of DisquietAstoundedFinishing It
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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“Each of us is several, is many,is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings is not the same as the self who suffers or takes joy in them. In the vast colony of our being there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways. Livro Do Desassossego”

PeopleThinkingWayFeelsDifferentSelfJoySufferingSpeciesDifferent WaysSurroundingsBeing ThereColonyDisdain
Book:The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa
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“My hapless peers with their lofty dreams--how I envy and despise them! I'm with the others, the even more hapless, who have no-one but themselves to whom they can tell their dreams and show what would be verses if they wrote them. I'm with those poor slobs who have no books to show, who have no literature beside their own soul, and who are suffocating to death due to the fact that they exist without having taken that mysterious, transcendental exam that makes one eligible to live.”

IfsBookSoulFactsShowsDreamWould BeLiteraturePoorTakenDuesEnvyMysteriousDespiseVersesPeersLoftyExamTranscendentalSuffocating
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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“I had the same sensation as when we watch someone sleep. When asleep we all become children again. Perhaps because in the state of slumber we can do no wrong and are unconscious of life, the greatest criminal and most self- absorbed egotist are holy, by a natural magic, as long as they're sleeping. For me there's no discernible difference between killing a child and killing a sleeping man.”

MenChildrenLongSelfStatesCan DoNaturalDifferencesSleepWatchesMagicHolyKillingCriminalsUnconsciousSensationsSlumberSelf Absorbed
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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“Through an experience that simultaneously involved my sensibility and intelligence, I realized early on that the imaginative life, however morbid it might seem, is the one that suits temperaments like mine. The fictions of my imagination (as it later developed) may weary me, but they don't hurt or humiliate. Impossible lovers can't cheat on us, or smile at us falsely, or be calculating in their caresses. They never forsake us, and they don't die or disappear. --The book of Disquiet”

MayBookSeemsMightDiesImaginationHurtFictionImpossibleMinesLoversInvolvedDisappearI RealizedSuitsSensibilityCheatWearyTemperamentImaginativeMy ImaginationForsakeMorbidCaressCalculatingHumiliateBook Of Disquiet
Book:The Book of Disquiet
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“But I am not perfect in my way of putting things Because I lack the divine simplicity Of being only what I appear to be.”

WayPerfectDivineSimplicityMy WayNot PerfectI Am Not Perfect
Book:Selected poems by Fernando Pessoa: including poems by his heteronyms: Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis [and] Alvaro de Campos, as well as some of his English sonnets and selections from his letters
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“In the ordinary jumble of my literary drawer, I sometimes find texts I wrote ten, fifteen, or even more years ago. And many of them seem to me written by a stranger: I simply do not recognize myself in them. There was a person who wrote them, and it was I. I experienced them, but it was in another life, from which I just woke up, as if from someone else's dream.”

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Author:Fernando Pessoa
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“I've always been an ironic dreamer, unfaithful to my inner promises. Like a complete outsider, a casual observer of whom I thought I was, I've always enjoyed watching my daydreams go down in defeat. I was never convinced of what I believed in. I filled my hands with sand, called it gold, and opened them up to let it slide through. Words were my only truth. When the right words were said, all was done; the rest was the sand that had always been.”

SaidDoneHandsPromiseGoldFilledDefeatConvincedEnjoyedSandIronicDreamerOutsidersObserversSlidesCasualDaydreamingUnfaithfulRight WordsBook Of Disquiet
Book:The Book of Disquiet
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