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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
Dereliction
Inaction
Metaphysical
Strikes
Mistake
Live
Matter

More quotes by Fernando Pessoa

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If we knew the truth, we'd see it all else is system and outskirts.
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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What can I expect from myself? My sensation in all their horrible acuity, and a profound awareness of feeling. A sharp mind that only destroys me, and an unusual capacity for dreaming to keep me entertained. A dead will and a reflection that cradles it, like a living child. From, The Book of Disquiet
Fernando Pessoa
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Everything is worthwhile if the soul is not small.
Fernando Pessoa
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Strength without agility is a mere mass.
Fernando Pessoa
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The human soul is an abyss
Fernando Pessoa
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Man shouldn't be able to see his own face. That's what's most terrible. Nature gave him the possibility of not seeing it, as well as the incapacity of not seeing his own eyes.
Fernando Pessoa
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Isn't joyful or painful this pain in which I rejoice
Fernando Pessoa
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There's a tiredness of abstract inteligence, and it's the most horrible of tirednesses. It doesn't weight on you like the tiredness of the body, nor does it worry you like the tiredness of knowledge and emotion. It's a weightiness of the conscience of the world, an inability of the soul to breathe.
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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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 was a poet animated by philosophy, not a philosopher with poetic faculties.
Fernando Pessoa
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Your poems are of interest to mankind your liver isn't. Drink till you write well and feel sick. Bless your poems and be damned to you.
Fernando Pessoa
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The beauty of a naked body is felt only by the dressed races.
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
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My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while.
Fernando Pessoa
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...the painful intensity of my sensations, even when they're happy ones the blissful intensity of my sensations, even when they're sad.
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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Myth is the nothing that is all.
Fernando Pessoa
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Everything is theater.
Fernando Pessoa