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Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa Quotes

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Famous Fernando Pessoa Quotes

“Life is an experimental journey that we make involuntarily. It is a journey of the mind through matter, and since it is the mind that journeys, that is where we live. And so there are contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely and more turbulently than those who live externally. The end result is what counts. What was felt is what was lived. A dream can tire us out as much as physical labour. We never live as hard as when we've thought a great deal.”

ThinkingLifeLivingExperienceThoughtContemplationIntroversionExtroversionInternal LifeExternal Life
Book:The Book of Disquiet
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“To feel everything in every way; to be able to think with the emotions and feel with the mind; not to desire much except with the imagination; to suffer with haughtiness; to see clearly so as to write accurately; to know oneself through diplomacy and dissimulation; to become naturalized as a different person, with all the necessary documents; in short, to use all sensations but only on the inside, peeling them all down to God and then wrapping everything up again and putting it back in the shop window like the sales assistant I can see from here with the small tins of a new brand of shoe polish.”

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Book:The Book of Disquiet
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“I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book. I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love. I'm a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breath life into me.”

ThinkingKnowsFeelsLongBookCharacterDreamNovelKnow HowAirTownsBreathsNever QuitUndoneUnwrittenHoveringBook Of DisquietPrologue
Book:The Book of Disquiet
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“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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“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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“Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally. The end result is what matters. What one felt was what one experienced. One retires to bed as wearily from having dreamed as from having done hard physical labor. One never lives so intensely as when one has been thinking hard.”

ThinkingWorldHas BeensSoulEndsMatterHardDoneLife IsSpiritFeltResultsJourneyMaterialsBedLaborRetiringWhat MattersContemplativeMaterial WorldEnd ResultsThinking Hard
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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“When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial.”

PeopleThinkingFeelsKindSaidI CanRealDreamFacesSpeakHoursLosesSleepHalfTalkingConversationTiredWittyFleshCleverAll KindsImaginaryFlashRemarksComebackSociabilityImaginary FriendBook Of Disquiet
Book:The Book of Disquiet
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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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“And leaning out the window, enjoying the day above the varying volume of the entire city, only one thought swells my soul – the intimate will to die, to finish, not to see more light over any city, not to think, not to feel, to leave behind like wrapping paper the course of the sun and the days, to rid myself, at the edge of the grand bed, as of a heavy suit, of the involuntary effort to be.”

ThinkingFeelsSoulLightDiesCoursesEnjoyEffortCitiesBehindsSunBedPaperWindowEdgesHeavySuitsMy SoulIntimateVolumeInvoluntaryWrappingWrapping Paper
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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“Tomorrow I too – this feeling and thinking soul, the universe I am to myself – yes, tomorrow I too will be someone who no longer walks these streets, someone others will evoke with a vague: 'I wonder what's become of him?” And everything I do, everything I feel, everything I experience, will be just one less passer-by on the daily streets of some city or other.”

ThinkingFeelsSoulFeelingsUniverseWalksCitiesWonderStreetsTomorrowJust OneVagueEvokeBook Of Disquiet
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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“Silence emerges from the sound of rain and spreads in a crescendo of gray monotony over the narrow street I contemplate. I’m sleeping while awake, standing by the window, leaning against it as against everything. I search in myself for the sensations I feel before these falling threads of darkly luminous water that stand out from the grimy building facades and especially from the open windows. And I don’t know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don’t know what to think or where I am.”

ThinkingKnowsWantFeelsFallSoundWaterSleepSilenceStreetsBuildingRainStandingWindowSpreadAwakeSensationsGrayContemplatingThreadStanding OutLuminousFacadeMonotonyCrescendoNarrow StreetsSound Of Rain
Book:The Book of Disquiet
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“Our problem isn't that we're individualists. It's that our individualism is static rather than dynamic. We value what we think rather than what we do. We forget that we haven't done, or been, what we thought; that the first function of life is action, just as the first property of things is motion.”

ThinkingFirstsDoneProblemActionLife IsValuesForgetHavensFunctionPropertyIndividualismStatic
Book:The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa
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“My happiest hours are those in which I think nothing, want nothing, when I do not even dream, but lose myself in some spurious vegetable torpor, moss growing on the surface of life. Without a trace of bitterness I savour my absurd awareness of being nothing, a mere foretaste of death and extinction.”

ThinkingWantDreamHoursLosesGrowingAwarenessMereSurfaceAbsurdBitternessVegetablesExtinctionMossSavourWithout A Trace
Book:The Book of Disquiet
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“Let's develop theories, patiently and honestly thinking them out, in order to promptly act against them – acting and justifying our actions with new theories that condemn them. Let's cut a path in life and then go immediately against that path. Let's adopt all the poses and gestures of something we aren't and don't even wish to be, and don't even wish to taken for being.”

ThinkingActionOrderWishActingPathTakenCuttingTheoryHonestlyGesturesOur Actions
Author:Fernando Pessoa
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