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Fernando Pessoa

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Famous Fernando Pessoa Quotes

“I sometimes think, with a sad delight, that if one day, in a future I no longer belong to, these sentences, that I write, last with praise, I will at last have the people who understand me, those mine, the true family to be born in and be loved... I will only be understood in effigy, when affection no longer repays the dead the unaffection that was, when living.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWritingSometimesLastsBornMinesOne DayUnderstoodPraiseAffectionDelightSentencesImmortalityUnderstand MeTrue Family
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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“And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else, and I fear it as nothing and as something else simultaneously, as if gross horror and non-existence could coincide there, as if my coffin could entrap the eternal breathing of a bodily soul, as if immortality could be tormented by confinement. The idea of hell, which only a satanic soul could have invented seems to me to have derived from this sort of confusion - a mixture of two different fears that contradict and contaminate each other.”

IfsTwoIdeasDifferentSoulSeemsHateExistenceHellHorrorEternalConfusionBreathingImmortalityNothingnessGrossMixturesFascinationFear Of DeathCoffinsSatanicConfinementNon ExistenceHate Life
Author: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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“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.”

IfsWritingYearsPersonsSometimesDreamSeemsWrittenTenOrdinaryYears AgoStrangerFifteenDrawersAnother Life
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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“Once we're able to see this world as an illusion and a phantasm, then we can see everything that happens to us as a dream, as something that pretended to exist while we were sleeping. And we will become subtly and profoundly indifferent towards all of life's setbacks and calamities. Those who die turned a corner, which is why we've stopped seeing them; those who suffer pass before us like a nightmare, if we feel, or like an unpleasant daydream, if we think. And even our own suffering won't be more than this nothingness.”

IfsThinkingWorldFeelsDreamHappensAbleSufferingDiesSleepSeeingThis WorldIllusionCornersNightmareIndifferentNothingnessCalamityDaydreamingSetback
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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“Giving importance to what we think because we thought it, taking our own selves not only (to quote the Greek philosopher) as the measure of all things but as their norm or standard, we create in ourselves, if not an interpretation, at least a criticism of the universe, which we don't even know and therefore cannot criticize. The giddiest, most weak-minded of us then promote that criticism to an interpretation that's superimposed, like a hallucination; induced rather than deduced. It's a hallucination in the strict sense, being an illusion based on something only dimly seen.”

IfsThinkingKnowsGivingSelfUniverseStandardsIllusionAll ThingsCriticismWeakImportancePhilosopherGreekInterpretationCriticizeStrictNormHallucinationsGreek Philosopher
Book:The Education of the Stoic: The Only Manuscript of the Baron of Teive
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“For a long time now I haven't existed. I'm utterly calm. No one distinguishes me from who I am. I just felt myself breath as if I'd done something new, or done it late. I'm beginning to be conscious of being conscious. Perhaps tomorrow I will wake up to myself and resume the course of my existence. I don't know if that will make more happy or less. I don't know anything.”

IfsKnowsLongDoneCoursesFeltExistenceHavensTomorrowLateLong TimeConsciousWake UpBreathsCalmWho I AmSomething NewResumes
Book:The Book of Disquietude: By Bernardo Soares, Assistant Bookkeeper in the City of Lisbon
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“I’ve always wanted to be liked. It grieved me that I was treated with indifference. Left an orphan by Fortune, I wanted—like all orphans—to be the object of someone’s affection. This need has always been a hunger that went unsatisfied, and so thoroughly have I adapted to this inevitable hunger that I sometimes wonder if I really feel the need to eat. Whatever be the case, life pains me.”

IfsNeedsFeelsSometimesWantedPainLeftWonderCasesObjectsFortuneHungerAffectionTreatedInevitableIndifferenceOrphanAdaptedUnsatisfiedPain In Life
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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“If, on thinking this, I look up to see if reality can quench my thirst, I see inexpressive facades, inexpressive faces, inexpressive gestures. Stones, bodies, ideas - all dead. All movements are one great standstill. Nothing means anything to me, not because it's unfamiliar but because I don't know what it is. The world has slipped away. And in the bottom of my soul - as the only reality of this moment - there's an intense and invisible grief, a sadness like the sound of someone crying in a dark room.”

IfsThinkingKnowsWorldLooksMeanIdeasSoulMomentsBodyRealityFacesSoundDarkRoomsGriefSadnessCryMovementStonesBottomInvisibleIntenseMy SoulLook UpGesturesThirstUnfamiliarFacadeQuenchDark RoomStandstill
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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“Sadly I write in my quiet room, alone as I have always been, alone as I will always be. And I wonder if my apparently negligible voice might not embody the essence of thousands of voices, the longing for self expression of thousands of lives, the patience of millions of souls resigned like my own to their daily lot, their useless dreams, and their hopeless hopes.”

IfsWritingSoulSelfDreamMightVoiceMy OwnRoomsWonderMillionsExpressionQuietEssenceLongingUselessHopelessSelf ExpressionResignedQuiet Room
Book:The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa
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“What's given, in fact, always depends on the person or thing it's given to. A minor incident in the street brings the cook to the door and entertains him more than I would be entertained by contemplating the most original idea, by reading the greatest book, or by having the most gratifying of useless dreams. If life is basically monotony, he has escaped it more than I. And he escapes it more easily than I. The truth isn't with him or with me, because it isn't with anyone, but happiness does belong to him.”

IfsPersonsDoeBookIdeasFactsDreamWould BeLife IsReadingGivenDoorsStreetsDependsTruth IsOriginalsCooksUselessContemplatingMinorsIncidentsMonotonyOriginal IdeasOrigin Of LifeGreatest Book
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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“The principle tragedy of my life is, like all tragedies, an irony of Destiny. I reject real life as if it were a condemnation; I reject dreams as if they were an ignoble liberation. [...]After the end of the stars uselessly whitened in the morning sky and the breeze became less cold in the barely orange tinged in the yellow of the light on the scattered low clouds, I, who hadn't slept, could finally, slowly raise my body, exhausted from nothing from the bed from which I had thought the universe.”

IfsRealEndsDreamBodyLightLife IsUniverseStarsPrinciplesDestinyMorningSkyColdBedLowsTragedyRaisesCloudsReal LifeLiberationIronyRejectsYellowExhaustedOrangeBreezeLife Is LikeCondemnationIgnobleMorning Sky
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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