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

More quotes by Fernando Pessoa

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I never cared about whatever tragic event happened in China. It's faraway decoration, even if in blood and plague.
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I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me.
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Wise is he who enjoys the show offered by the world.
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I come closer to my desk as to a bulwark against life.
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My joy is as painful as my pain.
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I always live in the present. The future I can't know. The past I no longer have.
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The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.
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To think is to destroy.
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Isn't joyful or painful this pain in which I rejoice
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I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.
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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
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I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays.
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Today I suddenly experienced an absurd but quite valid sensation. I realized, in an intimate lightning flash, that I am no one. No one, absolutely no one.
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Yes, talking to people makes me sleepy.
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Have you ever considered, beloved other, how invisible we are to each other? We look at each other without seeing. We listen to each other and hear only a voice inside out self. The words of others are mistakes of our hearing, shipwrecks of our understanding. How confidently we believe OUR meanings of other people's words.
Fernando Pessoa
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I enjoy wording. Words for me are tangible bodies, visible sirens, incarnate sensualities.
Fernando Pessoa
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Faithful to the word given and the idea had.
Fernando Pessoa
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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
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I am tired of myself in every way. All things, deep down to the secret of their roots, are stained by the color of my weariness.
Fernando Pessoa
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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