If you cannot live alone, you were born a slave. 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 sailing ships pain 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 eye heart men To be great, be whole; Exclude nothing. Be whole in everything. Fernando Pessoa whole 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 possibility reality past I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided. Fernando Pessoa book-of-disquiet battle bears 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 imperfect humanity perfection Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Fernando Pessoa solitude life art 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 tired dream sleep There's a non-existent peace in the uncertain quietness Fernando Pessoa quietness uncertain peace Life is full of paradoxes, as roses are of thorns. Fernando Pessoa thorns life-is rose 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-disquiet rejected taken 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 tired sadness loss The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart. Fernando Pessoa inventor mirrors heart I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist. Fernando Pessoa up-early ready long To know how to think with emotions and to feel with intellect. Fernando Pessoa intellect emotion thinking 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 swamps birth infinite 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 depressing real life 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 writing book thinking 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 breathing hate ideas I pass times, I pass silences, formless worlds pass me by. Fernando Pessoa silence journey world
