There are inner sufferings so subtle and so diffuse that we can't tell whether they belong to the body or the soul, whether they're an anxiety that comes from our feeling that life is futile or an indisposition originating in some organic abyss such as the stomach, liver or brain. How often my normal self-awareness becomes turbid with the stirred dregs of an anguished stagnation! How often it hurts me to exist, with a nausea so indefinite I'm not sure if it's tedium or a warning that I'm about to vomit! How often…
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.
Bio from: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Portrait adapted from: Wikimedia Commons, S.A. e Maria José de Lencastre (Public domain / CC0)
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.
Works in ChatGPT, Claude, or Any AI
Add semantic quote search to your AI assistant via MCP. One command setup.
Original: A minha vida é como se me batessem com ela.
I belong to a generation that inherited disbelief in the Christian faith and created in itself a disbelief in all other faiths. Our fathers still had the believing impulse, which they transferred from Christianity to other forms of illusion. Some were champions of social equality, others were wholly enamoured of beauty, still others had faith in science and its achievements, and there were some who became even more Christian, resorting to various Easts and Wests in search of new religious forms to entertain their otherwise hollow consciousness of merely living.
We lost all of this. We were born with none of these consolations. Each civilization follows the particular path of a religion that represents it; turning to other religions, it loses the one it had, and ultimately loses them all.
We lost the one, and all the others with it.
And so we were left, each man to himself, in the desolation of feeling ourselves live. A ship may seem to be an object whose purpose is to sail, but no, its purpose is to reach a port. We found ourselves sailing without any idea of what port we were supposed to reach. Thus we reproduced a painful version of the argonauts' adventurous precept:* living doesn't matter, only sailing does.
Original: E então vem-me o desejo transbordante, absurdo, de uma espécie de satanismo que precedeu Satã, de que um dia [...] se encontre uma fuga para fora de Deus e o mais profundo de nós deixe, não sei como, de fazer parte do ser ou do não ser.
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.
Try QuoteGPT
Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.
Suddenly I'm all alone in the world. I see all this from the summit of a mental rooftop. I'm alone in the world. To see is to be distant. To see clearly is to halt. To analyze is to be foreign. No one who passes by touches me. Around me there is only air. I'm so isolated I can feel the distance between me and my suit. I'm a child in a nightshirt carrying a dimly lit candle and traversing a huge empty house.
Man should not be able to see his own face. Nothing is more terrible than that. Nature gave him the gift of being unable either to see his face or to look into his own eyes. He could only see his own face in the waters of rivers and lakes. Even the posture he had to adopt to do so was symbolic. He had to bend down, to lower himself, in order to commit the ignominy of seeing his own face. The creator of the mirror poisoned the human soul.
Original: Quem sou eu para mim? Só uma sensação minha.
Ζήτησα τόσο λίγα απ' τη ζωή, αλλά ακόμα κι αυτά τα λίγα η ζωή μού τα αρνήθηκε. Ένα υπόλειμμα από ένα κομμάτι ήλιου, λίγη ύπαιθρο, λίγη ησυχία κι ένα κομμάτι ψωμί, να μη με βαραίνει πολύ η γνώση ότι υπάρχω, να μην έχω καμιά απαίτηση από τους άλλους ούτε κι αυτοί από μένα. Ακόμα κι αυτό μου το αρνήθηκαν, όπως αυτός που αρνείται να δώσει ελεημοσύνη όχι γιατί του λείπει η καλοσύνη, αλλά γιατί βαριέται να ξεκουμπώσει το παλτό του.