I am the escaped one, After I was born They locked me up inside me But I left. My soul seeks me, Through hills and valley, I hope my soul Never finds me. Fernando Pessoa More Quotes by Fernando Pessoa More Quotes From Fernando Pessoa There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful. Fernando Pessoa sailingshipspain Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face – there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes. Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself. The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart. Fernando Pessoa eyeheartmen To be great, be whole; Exclude nothing. Be whole in everything. Fernando Pessoa whole If you cannot live alone, you were born a slave. Fernando Pessoa slavebornsolitude I always live in the present. I don’t know the future and no longer have the past. The former oppresses me as the possibility of everything, the latter as the reality of nothing. Fernando Pessoa possibilityrealitypast I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided. Fernando Pessoa book-of-disquietbattlebears We worship perfection because we can't have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect. Fernando Pessoa imperfecthumanityperfection Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Fernando Pessoa solitudelifeart 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. Fernando Pessoa tireddreamsleep There's a non-existent peace in the uncertain quietness Fernando Pessoa quietnessuncertainpeace Life is full of paradoxes, as roses are of thorns. Fernando Pessoa thornslife-isrose I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect Fernando Pessoa book-of-disquietrejectedtaken Being tired of all illusions and of everything about illusions – the loss of illusions, the uselessness of having them, the prefatigue of having to have them in order to lose them, the sadness of having had them, the intellectual shame of having had them knowing that they would have to end this way. Fernando Pessoa tiredsadnessloss The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart. Fernando Pessoa inventormirrorsheart I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist. Fernando Pessoa up-earlyreadylong To know how to think with emotions and to feel with intellect. Fernando Pessoa intellectemotionthinking Inch by inch I conquered the inner terrain I was born with. Bit by bit I reclaimed the swamp in which I'd languished. I gave birth to my infinite being, but I had to wrench myself out of me with forceps. Fernando Pessoa swampsbirthinfinite 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. Fernando Pessoa depressingreallife I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing; it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will's surrender. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice. Fernando Pessoa writingbookthinking And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else, and I fear it as nothing and as something else simultaneously, as if gross horror and non-existence could coincide there, as if my coffin could entrap the eternal breathing of a bodily soul, as if immortality could be tormented by confinement. The idea of hell, which only a satanic soul could have invented seems to me to have derived from this sort of confusion - a mixture of two different fears that contradict and contaminate each other. Fernando Pessoa breathinghateideas
