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pg 9, The consciousness of life's unconsciousness is the oldest tax levied on the intelligence.

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
Unconsciousness
Oldest
Intelligence
Taxes
Consciousness
Life
Levied

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You breathe better when you're rich.
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Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what's in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been in the text, but there's always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many.
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Art gives us the illusion of liberation from the sordid business of being.
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The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life.
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Nobody appropriates novelties as readily as the Portuguese.
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The slope takes you to the windmill, but effort takes you nowhere.
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I come closer to my desk as to a bulwark against life.
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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
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I take with me the conscience of defeat as a victory banner.
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Every man who deserves to be famous knows it is not worth the trouble.
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Never having discovered qualities in myself which could attract someone else, I could never believe that anyone felt attracted to me.
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Inch by inch I conquered the inner terrain I was born with. Bit by bit I reclaimed the swamp in which I'd languished. I gave birth to my infinite being, but I had to wrench myself out of me with forceps.
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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.
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I pass times, I pass silences, formless worlds pass me by.
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And I have the others in me. Even when I’m far away from them, I am forced to live with them. Even when I’m all alone, crowds surround me. I have no place to flee to, unless I were to flee from myself.
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There’s enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.
Fernando Pessoa
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We worship perfection because we can't have it if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.
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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!
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We’ve been devastated by the severest and deadliest drought in history – that of our profound awareness of the futility of all effort and the vanity of all plans.
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I Know, I Alone I know, I alone How much it hurts, this heart With no faith nor law Nor melody nor thought. Only I, only I And none of this can I say Because feeling is like the sky - Seen, nothing in it to see.
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