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In this metallic age of barbarians, only a relentless cultivation of our ability to dream, to analyse and to captivate can prevent our personality from degenerating into nothing or else into a personality like all the rest.

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
Else
Barbarians
Dream
Cultivation
Nothing
Relentless
Like
Prevent
Personality
Degenerating
Rest
Captivate
Age
Analyse
Ability
Metallic

More quotes by Fernando Pessoa

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I've reached the point where tedium is a person, the incarnate fiction of my own company.
Fernando Pessoa
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Everything is absurd.
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
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FIRST WATCHER Why do people die? SECOND WATCHER Perhaps because they don't dream enough.
Fernando Pessoa
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I am the suburb of a non-existent town, the prolix commentary on a book never written. I am nobody, nobody. I am a character in a novel which remains to be written, and I float, aerial, scattered without ever having been, among the dreams of a creature who did not know how to finish me off.
Fernando Pessoa
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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
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I enjoy wording. Words for me are tangible bodies, visible sirens, incarnate sensualities.
Fernando Pessoa
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Liberty is the possibility of isolation.
Fernando Pessoa
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Literature exists because the world isn't enough.
Fernando Pessoa
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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 sea with an end can be Greek or Roman: the endless sea is Portuguese.
Fernando Pessoa
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There’s enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.
Fernando Pessoa
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The end of lower art is to please, the end of average art is to raise the top, the end of superior art is to free.
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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If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.
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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The startling reality of things is my discovery every single day.
Fernando Pessoa
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I'm upset by the happiness of all these men who don't know they're unhappy. Because of that, though, I love them all. Dear vegetables!
Fernando Pessoa
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I know not what tomorrow will bring.
Fernando Pessoa
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If we knew the truth, we'd see it all else is system and outskirts.
Fernando Pessoa