Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Fernando Pessoa
Age: 47 †
Born: 1888
Born: June 13
Died: 1935
Died: November 30
Author
Essayist
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Translator
Writer
Lisboa
Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa
Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa
Alberto Caeiro
Ricardo Reis
Bernardo Soares
Pessoa
Infinite
Wrenches
Gave
Swamp
Birth
Swamps
Bits
Terrain
Born
Conquered
Inch
Inches
Reclaimed
Inner
Wrench

More quotes by Fernando Pessoa

Image
Each of us is several, is many,is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings is not the same as the self who suffers or takes joy in them. In the vast colony of our being there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways. Livro Do Desassossego
Fernando Pessoa
Image
We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Humanitarianism is rude.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
God gave the sea the danger and the abyss, but it was in it that He mirrored the sky.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Isn't joyful or painful this pain in which I rejoice
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Given that we cannot know all the elements in a problem, we never can solve it.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
I want to be a work of art, at least in my soul, since I can’t be one in my body.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
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.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
I always live in the present. The future I can't know. The past I no longer have.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Everything is theater.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
What is a disease is wishing with an equal intensity what is needed and what is desirable, and suffer for not being perfect as you would suffer for not having bread. The romantic error is this wanting the moon as if there was a way to get it.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
I have at this moment so many fundamental thoughts, so many truly metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write any more, not to think any more, but to allow the fever of speaking to make me sleepy, and with my eyes closed, like a cat, I play with everything I could have said.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
Everything is absurd.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
My past is everything I failed to be.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
After the rains departed the skies and settled on earth - clear skies moist brilliant earth - greater clarity returned to life alone with the blue above and made the world below rejoice with the freshness of the recent rain. It left heaven in our souls and a freshness in our hearts.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
I Know, I Alone I know, I alone How much it hurts, this heart With no faith nor law Nor melody nor thought. Only I, only I And none of this can I say Because feeling is like the sky - Seen, nothing in it to see.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
pg 9, The consciousness of life's unconsciousness is the oldest tax levied on the intelligence.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
The sea with an end can be Greek or Roman: the endless sea is Portuguese.
Fernando Pessoa
Image
I never was but an isolated bon vivant, which is absurd or a mystic bon vivant, which is an impossible thing.
Fernando Pessoa