Fernando Pessoa Quotes

Portuguese poet, writer, and philosopher (1888–1935); creator of the heteronymic system including Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos, and Bernardo Soares

Fernando Pessoa (13 June 1888 – 30 November 1935) was a Portuguese poet and writer, most of whose work was published posthumously. He wrote frequently under heteronyms, alter egos with developed personalities, biographies, jobs, habits, attitudes, addresses, etc., who sometimes quoted and interacted with each other and other people.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pen Names: Alberto Caeiro • Álvaro de Campos • Ricardo Reis • Bernardo Soares

Native Name: Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa

Alternative Names: Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa

From Wikidata (CC0)

Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.

I abhor running real risks, but it's not because I'm afraid of feeling too intensely. It's because they break my perfect focus on my sensations, and this disturbs and depersonalizes me.

I never go where there's risk. I fear the tedium of dangers.

I try to say what I feel
Without thinking about what I feel.
I try to place words right next to my idea
So that I won't need a corridor
Of thought leading to words.

If a man can only write well when drunk, I'll tell him: get drunk. And if he tells me that his liver suffers with it, I'll answer: what's your liver? It's a dead thing that lives as long as you live, and the poems you'll write will live without a as long as.

سأكون دائما ذلك الذى توقع أن يفتحوا له باباً فى جدار بلا باب

It could have been any number of things: hardship, grief or simply the suffering born of the indifference that comes from having suffered too much.

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.

no nostalgia hurts as much as nostalgia for things that never existed!

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

Temos, todos que vivemos,
Uma vida que é vivida
E outra vida que é pensada,
E a única vida que temos
É essa que é dividida
Entre a verdadeira e a errada.

Original: O comboio abranda, é o Cais do Sodré. Cheguei a Lisboa, mas não a uma conclusão.

To be understood is to prostitute oneself

Original: Doem-me a cabeça e o universo.

My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while. […]. I'm two, and both keep their distance — Siamese twins that aren't attached.

Inch by inch I conquered the inner terrain I was born with. Bit by bit I reclaimed the swamp in which I'd languished. I gave birth to my infinite being, but I had to wrench myself out of me with forceps.

أحيانًا، ثمة نشوة جمالية كبيرة بأن ندع عاطفة ما تمر، من دون أن نتكلّم عنها، على الرغم من أن مرورها يتطلب الكلمات.