Quote

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

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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
Unknown
Prefer
Seriously
Naturalness
Oneself
Humanly
Understood
Prostitute
Respect
Remaining
Taken
Rejected
Always
Dues

More quotes by Fernando Pessoa

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All beginnings are involuntary.
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Life is good, but Wine is better.
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But my sadness is comforting Because it’s right and natural And because it’s what the soul should feel When it already thinks it exists And the hand pick flowers And the soul takes no notice.
Fernando Pessoa
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The human soul is an abyss
Fernando Pessoa
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I come closer to my desk as to a bulwark against life.
Fernando Pessoa
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It is noble to be shy, illustrious not to know how to act, great not to have a gift for living.
Fernando Pessoa
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I pass times, I pass silences, formless worlds pass me by.
Fernando Pessoa
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I never was but an isolated bon vivant, which is absurd or a mystic bon vivant, which is an impossible thing.
Fernando Pessoa
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There is no safe standard to tell man from animals.
Fernando Pessoa
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There is a time when it is necessary to abandon the used clothes, which already have the shape of our body and to forget our paths, which takes us always to the same places. This is the time to cross the river: and if we don't dare to do it, we will have stayed, forever beneath ourselves
Fernando Pessoa
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Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality - it's all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. What I'm attending here is a show with another set. And the show I'm attending is myself.
Fernando Pessoa
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THIRD WATCHER Let her speak. Don't interrupt. She knows words that mermaids taught her...I'm falling asleep in order to hear her...Go on, sister, go on...My heart aches because I wasn't you when you dreamed at the seashore.
Fernando Pessoa
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I'm sick of everything, and of the everythingness of everything.
Fernando Pessoa
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Every gesture is a revolutionary act.
Fernando Pessoa
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There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.
Fernando Pessoa
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In any spirit that isn't deformed there is the belief in God. In any spirit that is not deformed there isn't the belief in a particular God.
Fernando Pessoa
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The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.
Fernando Pessoa
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It's been months since I last wrote. I've lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I've felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven't existed. I've been someone else. I've lived without thinking.
Fernando Pessoa
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Nostalgia! I feel it even for someone who meant nothing to me, out of anxiety for the flight of time and a sickness bred of the mystery of life. If one of the faces I pass daily on the streets disappears, I feel sad yet they meant nothing to me, other than being a symbol of all life.
Fernando Pessoa
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Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions.
Fernando Pessoa