Fernando Pessoa Quotes

Fernando Pessoa Quotes

To be great, be whole;
Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.
Be whole in everything. Put all you are
Into the smallest thing you do.
So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor
Because it blooms up above.

Perhaps he still hopes. If there’s any justice in the Gods’ injustice, then may they let us keep our dreams, even when they’re impossible, and may our dreams be happy, even when they’re trivial.
...
Every dream is the same dream, for they’re all dreams. Let the Gods change my dreams, but not my gift for dreaming.

To have touched the feet of Christ is no excuse for mistakes in punctuation.
If a man writes well only when he's drunk, then I'll tell him: Get drunk. And if he says that it's bad for his liver, I'll answer: What's your liver? A dead thing that lives while you live, whereas the poems you write live without while.

There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.

I suffer from life and from other people. I can’t look at reality face to face. Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful - only then do I find myself and feel comforted.

The value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. That is why there are unforgettable moments and unique people!

المرآة تعكس بدقة متناهية دون أن تخطئ ابداَ . لأنها وبكل بساطة لا تفكر

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

If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.

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!

We, all who live, have
A life that is lived
And another life that is thought,
And the only life we have
It's the one that is divided
In right or wrong.

Again I see you, But me I don't see!, The magical mirror in which I saw myself has been broken, And only a piece of me I see in each fatal fragment - Only a piece of you and me!...

Isn't joyful or painful this pain in which I rejoice

Ah! The anguish, the vile rage, the despair
Of not being able to express
With a shout, an extreme and bitter shout,
The bleeding of my heart.

Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what's in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been in the text, but there's always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many.

No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it

Look, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates.

My past is everything I failed to be.

Time, which grays hair and wrinkles faces, also withers violent affections, and much more quickly.

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

Les dieux sont ceux qui ne doutent jamais.

With slight misconceptions of reality we fabricate our hopes and beliefs, and we live off crusts that we call cakes, like poor children who make-believe they’re happy.

I have to choose what I detest - either dreaming which my intelligence hates, or action, which my sensibility loathes; either action, for which I wasn't born, or dreaming, for which no one was born.

Detesting both, I choose neither; but since I must on occasion either dream or act, I mix the two things together.

Civilisation consists in giving something a name that doesn't belong to it and then dreaming over the result. And the false name joined to the true dream does create a new reality. The object does change into something else, because we make it change. We manufacture realities.

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

Não sou nada.
Nunca serei nada.
Não posso querer ser nada.
À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo.

I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything.

I am nothing.
I'll never be anything.
I couldn't want to be something.
Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams in the world.

Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!

In this metallic age of barbarians, only a relentless cultivation of our ability to dream, to analyse and to captivate can prevent our personality from degenerating into nothing or else into a personality like all the rest.

Só o que sonhamos é o que verdadeiramente somos, porque o mais, por estar realizado, pertenece ao mundo e a toda a gente

I'm almost convinced that I'm never awake. I'm not sure if I'm not in fact dreaming when I live, and living when I dream, or if dreaming and living are for me intersected, intermingled things that together form my conscious self.

Sometimes I muse about how wonderful it would be if I could string all my dreams together into one continuous life, a life consisting of entire days full of imaginary companions and created people.

De resto, com que posso contar comigo? Uma acuidade horrível das sensações, e a compreensão profunda de estar sentindo... Uma inteligência aguda para me destruir, e um poder de sonho sôfrego de me entreter... Uma vontade morta e uma reflexão que a embala, como a’ um filho vivo... Sim, croché...

I can breathe easier now that the appointments are behind me.
I missed them all, through deliberate negligence,
Having waited for the urge to go, which I knew wouldn’t come.
I’m free, and against organized, clothed society.
I’m naked and plunge into the water of my imagination.

Children are particularly literary, for they say what they feel not what someone has taught them to feel.

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.

My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.

The human soul is an abyss

The poet is a faker / Who's so good at his act / He even fakes the pain / Of pain he feels in fact.

La generazione a cui appartengo ha trovato un mondo privo di certezze per chi possegga un cuore e un cervello. Il lavoro di distruzione delle generazioni precedenti aveva prodotto come risultato che il mondo nel quale nascemmo era privo per noi di sicurezza sul piano religioso, di sostegno sul piano morale, di stabilità sul piano politico.

Share Page

Fernando Pessoa Wiki

Fernando Pessoa At Amazon

Best Quotes Ever Topics

Best Quotes Ever Authors