حققْ مصيرك، إسقِ نبتاتك، إعشقْ ورودك. الباقي هو ظلُّ أشجار ٍمجهولة. الواقع هو دائما أكثر أو أقل مما نرغب فيه. - Fernando Pessoa

Original: O império supremo é o do Imperador que abdica de toda a vida normal, dos outros homens, em quem o cuidado da supremacia não pesa como um fardo de jóias.

Pity him who lives at home
Happy with his life,
Without a dream, a flexing of wings,
To make him relinquish
Even the warmest ember of his hearth! Pity him who is happy!
He lives because life lasts.
Nothing within him whispers
More than the primeval law:
That life leads to the grave.

Autopsychography

The poet is a man who feigns
And feigns so thoroughly, at last
He manages to feign as pain
The pain he really feels,

And those who read what once he wrote
Feel clearly, in the pain they read,
Neither of the pains he felt,
Only a pain they cannot sense.

And thus, around its jolting track
There runs, to keep our reason busy,
The circling clockwork train of ours
That men agree to call a heart.