Fernando Pessoa Quotes

‎Chove. Que fiz eu da vida?
Fiz o que ela fez de mim...
De pensada, mal vivida...
Triste de quem é assim!

Destiny gave me only two things: a few accounting books and the gift of dreaming.

The true danger of romanticism is that the principles through which it rules itself are of such nature that everybody can invoke them to grant themselves the category of artist. Taking the anxiety of an unreachable happiness, the angst of unrealized dreams, the indifference towards action and life, as the defining criteria of genius or talent, immediately facilitates everyone who feels or has felt that same anxiety, suffers that same angst and is prey of that particular indifference, to feel themselves convinced that they themselves are an interesting individuality, and that Destiny, granting them that longing, suffering and dreams, implicitly bestowed on them intellectual greatness.

If this be to have sense, if to be awake
Be but to see this bright, great sleep of things,
For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll take
And for truth commune with imaginings

At first I felt dizzy - not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void.

عندي كتابٌ صغيرٌ أكتبُ فيه حين أنساك / كتابٌ ذو غلاف أسود / لم أخطّ فيه كلمة بعد

Original: O que é doença é desejar com igual intensidade o que é preciso e o que ´desejável, e sofrer por não ser perfeito como se se sofresse por não ter pão. O mal romântico é este: é querer a lua como se houvesse maneira de a obter.

To stagnate in the sun, goldenly, like an obscure lake surrounded by flowers.

As we wash our body so we should wash destiny, change life as we change clothes.

…to know how to think with emotions and to feel with intellect…

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.

Original: É nobre ser tímido, ilustre não saber agir, grande não ter jeito para viver.

Entre mim e a vida há um vidro ténue. Por mais nitidamente que eu veja e compreenda a vida, eu não lhe posso tocar.

My God, my God, who am I attending to? How many am I? Who is me? What is this interval between me and me?

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.