Fernando Pessoa Quotes

Without madness what is man But a wholesome beast, Postponed corpse that begets?

To have opinions is to sell out to youself. To have no opinions is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.

I'm something that I used to be. I'm never where I feel I am, and if I seek myself, I don't know who's seeking me. My boredom with everything has numbed me. I feel banished from my soul.

My soul's the present shadow of a presence gone.

I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays.

There's a non-existent peace in the uncertain quietness

Every spoken word double-crosses us. The written word is the only tolerable form of communication, as it isn't a stone in a bridge between souls but a ray of light between stars.

I don't believe in the landscape.

I’m beginning to know myself. I don’t exist. I’m the space between what I’d like to be and what others made of me. Just let me be at ease and all by myself in my room.

I search and can't find myself. I belong in chrysanthemum time, sharp in calla lily elongations. God made my soul into an ornamental thing.

Oh salty sea, how much of your salt Is tears from Portugal?

The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.

Lord, may the pain be ours, And the weakness that it brings, But at least give us the strength, Of not showing it to anyone!

But I am not perfect in my way of putting things Because I lack the divine simplicity Of being only what I appear to be.

Literature exists because the world isn't enough.

...the painful intensity of my sensations, even when they're happy ones; the blissful intensity of my sensations, even when they're sad.

I've never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has been my inner life.

I'm sick of everything, and of the everythingness of everything.

I pass times, I pass silences, formless worlds pass me by.

Success consists in being successful, not in having potential for success. Any wide piece of ground is the potential site of a palace, but there's no palace till it's built.

The human soul is an abyss

And, like the great damned souls, I shall always feel that thinking is worth more than living.

Between me and life is a faint glass. No matter how sharply I see and understand life, I cannot touch it.

To think is to destroy. The very process of thought indicates it for the same thought, as thinking is decomposing.

There's no regret more painful than the regret of things that never were.

I realize that, while often happy and often cheerful, I am always sad.

Let us sculpt in hopeless silence all our dreams of speaking.

What Hells and Purgatories and Heavens I have inside of me! But who sees me do anything that disagrees with life--me, so calm and peaceful?

I look at myself but I'm missing. I know myself: it’s not me.

Who am I to myself? Just a feeling of mine.

I know not what tomorrow will bring.

Whether or not they exist we are slaves to our gods.

Better to dream than to be.

Art consists in making others feel what we feel.

My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt.

Ah, who will save me from existing? It's neither death nor life that I want.

Everyone has his vanity, and each one's vanity is his forgetting that there are others with an equal soul.

The unnatural and the strange have a perfume of their own

It is noble to be shy, illustrious not to know how to act, great not to have a gift for living.

Every man who deserves to be famous knows it is not worth the trouble.

Ah, what a morning this is, awakening me to life's stupidity. [98 - Zenith trans.]

Art gives us the illusion of liberation from the sordid business of being.

I never meant to be but a dreamer.

Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.

Having touched Christ's feet is not an excuse for punctuation mistakes.

There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street.

The sea with an end can be Greek or Roman: the endless sea is Portuguese.

What is art but the denial of life?

The house clock, place certain there at the bottom of things, strikes the half hour dry and null. All is so much, all is so deep, all is so dark and cold!

But my sadness is comforting Because it’s right and natural And because it’s what the soul should feel When it already thinks it exists And the hand pick flowers And the soul takes no notice.