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Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa Quotes

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Famous Fernando Pessoa Quotes

“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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“To say! To know how to say! To know how to exist via the written voice and the intellectual image! This is all that matters in life; the rest is men and women, imagined loves and factitious vanities, the wiles of our digestion and forgetfulness, people squirming — like worms when a rock is lifted — under the huge abstract boulder of the meaningless blue sky.”

PeopleKnowsMenLoveMatterAgeVoiceKnow HowWrittenSkyRocksHugeIntellectualMen And WomenBlueVanityAbstractMeaninglessWormsForgetfulnessBlue SkyDigestionBoulders
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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“Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what's in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been in the text, but there's always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many.”

MenHas BeensDoubtNotesMarginsGist
Book:The Book of Disquietude: By Bernardo Soares, Assistant Bookkeeper in the City of Lisbon
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“Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face – there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes. Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself. The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.”

MenHumansLooksHeartEyeAbleFacesWaterRiversMirrorsAssumingCommitStaringHuman HeartInventorSymbolicPosturePondsSinisterStoopsIgnominy
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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“One or another man, liberated or cursed, suddenly sees-but even this man sees rarely-that all we are is what we aren't, that we fool ourselves about what's true and are wrong about what we conclude is right. And this man, who in a flash sees the universe naked, creates a philosophy or dreams up a religion; and the philosophy spreads and the religion propagates, and those who believe in the philosophy begin to wear it as a suit they don't see, and those who believe in the religion put it on as a mask they soon forget.”

MenBelievePhilosophyDreamUniverseForgetFoolPhilosophicalSpreadNakedSuitsMaskFlashAnother ManLiberatedCursedBook Of Disquiet
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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