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To live strikes me as a metaphysical mistake of matter, a dereliction of inaction.

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
Live
Matter
Dereliction
Inaction
Metaphysical
Strikes
Mistake

More quotes by Fernando Pessoa

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Life is whatever we conceive it to be.
Fernando Pessoa
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That is my morality or my metaphysics or me myself: a passer-by in everything, even my own soul. I belong to nothing, I desire nothing, I am nothing except an abstract centre of impersonal sensations, a sentient mirror fallen from the wall but still turned to reflect the diversity of the world.
Fernando Pessoa
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I am nothing. I'll never be anything. I couldn't want to be something. Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams in the world.
Fernando Pessoa
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Nature is the difference between the soul and God.
Fernando Pessoa
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Every gesture is a revolutionary act.
Fernando Pessoa
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Attention to detail and a perfectionist instinct, far from stimulating action, are character qualities that lead to renunciation. Better to dream than to be.
Fernando Pessoa
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To narrate is to create, for living is just being lived.
Fernando Pessoa
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As we wash our body so we should wash destiny, change life as we change clothes.
Fernando Pessoa
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The human soul is an abyss
Fernando Pessoa
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I think of life as an inn where I have to stay until the abyss coach arrives. I don't know where it will take me, for I know nothing.
Fernando Pessoa
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I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me.
Fernando Pessoa
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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
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Who am I to myself? Just a feeling of mine.
Fernando Pessoa
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To be great, be whole Exclude nothing. Be whole in everything.
Fernando Pessoa
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In today's life, the world belongs only to the stupid, the insensitive and the agitated. The right to live and triumph is now conquered almost by the same means by which you conquer internment in an asylum: the inability to think, amorality and hiperexcitation.
Fernando Pessoa
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And as well as I dream, I reason if I want, for that's just another kind of dream.
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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Faithful to the word given and the idea had.
Fernando Pessoa
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The startling reality of things is my discovery every single day.
Fernando Pessoa
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I want to be a work of art, at least in my soul, since I can’t be one in my body.
Fernando Pessoa