Art lies because it's social. Fernando Pessoa More Quotes by Fernando Pessoa More Quotes From Fernando Pessoa I come closer to my desk as to a bulwark against life. Fernando Pessoa desks The idea of any social obligation ... just the idea of it embarasses my thoughts for a day, and sometimes it's since the day before that I worry, and don't sleep well, and the real affair, when it happens, is absolutely insignificant and justifies nothing; and the case repeats itself and I never learn to learn. Fernando Pessoa real sleep ideas Action men are the unvoluntary slaves of wise men. Fernando Pessoa wise action men I'm a man for whom the outside world is an inner Reality. Fernando Pessoa men reality world To narrate is to create, for living is just being lived. Fernando Pessoa just-being My homeland is the portuguese language. Fernando Pessoa portuguese homeland language Wasting time has an esthetics to it. Fernando Pessoa wasting-time And as well as I dream, I reason if I want, for that's just another kind of dream. Fernando Pessoa kind dream want I'd like to be in the country so that I'd could like being in the city. Fernando Pessoa cities country We’ve been devastated by the severest and deadliest drought in history – that of our profound awareness of the futility of all effort and the vanity of all plans. Fernando Pessoa vanity effort profound I'm going to end a life that I thought could contain every kind of greatness but that in fact consisted only of my incapacity to really want to be great. Whenever I arrived at a certainty, I remembered that those with the greatest certainties are lunatics. Fernando Pessoa greatness want facts These pages are not my confession; they’re my definition. And I feel, as I begin to write it, that I can write it with some semblance of truth. Fernando Pessoa definitions pages writing Attention to detail and a perfectionist instinct, far from stimulating action, are character qualities that lead to renunciation. Better to dream than to be. Fernando Pessoa quality dream character I belong to a generation - assuming that this generation includes others besides me - that lost its faith in the gods of the old religions as well as in the gods of modern nonreligions. I reject Jehova as I reject humanity. Fernando Pessoa this-generation generations humanity Myth is the nothing that is all. Fernando Pessoa myth The Gods sell when they give. Glory is paid for with disgrace. Poor are the happy, for they are Just what passes. Fernando Pessoa poor glory giving My hapless peers with their lofty dreams--how I envy and despise them! I'm with the others, the even more hapless, who have no-one but themselves to whom they can tell their dreams and show what would be verses if they wrote them. I'm with those poor slobs who have no books to show, who have no literature beside their own soul, and who are suffocating to death due to the fact that they exist without having taken that mysterious, transcendental exam that makes one eligible to live. Fernando Pessoa taken dream book One or another man, liberated or cursed, suddenly sees-but even this man sees rarely-that all we are is what we aren't, that we fool ourselves about what's true and are wrong about what we conclude is right. And this man, who in a flash sees the universe naked, creates a philosophy or dreams up a religion; and the philosophy spreads and the religion propagates, and those who believe in the philosophy begin to wear it as a suit they don't see, and those who believe in the religion put it on as a mask they soon forget. Fernando Pessoa philosophical dream philosophy 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. Fernando Pessoa real dream sleep I feel closer ties and more intimate bonds with certain characters in books, with certain images I’ve seen in engravings, than with many supposedly real people with the metaphysical absurdity known as ‘flesh and blood’. In fact, ‘flesh and blood’ describes them very well: they resemble cuts of meat laid out on the butcher’s marble slab, dead creatures bleeding as though still alive. Fernando Pessoa real character book
