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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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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
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State
Leading
Without
Lasts
Wrote
Thinking
Happiness
Mental
Life
Last
Havens
Often
Haven
Felt
Lived
Vicarious
Else
Months
Slumber
Someone
Since
Existed
More quotes by Fernando Pessoa
There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.
Fernando Pessoa
There’s enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.
Fernando Pessoa
Our problem isn't that we're individualists. It's that our individualism is static rather than dynamic. We value what we think rather than what we do. We forget that we haven't done, or been, what we thought that the first function of life is action, just as the first property of things is motion.
Fernando Pessoa
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
Humanitarianism is rude.
Fernando Pessoa
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
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
Blessed are those who entrust their lives to no one.
Fernando Pessoa
Myth is the nothing that is all.
Fernando Pessoa
Every man who deserves to be famous knows it is not worth the trouble.
Fernando Pessoa
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
Fernando Pessoa
I walk along a street and see in the faces of the passersby not the expression they really have but the expression they would have for me if they knew about my life and how I am, if I carried, transparent in my gestures and my face, the ridiculous, timid abnormality of my soul.
Fernando Pessoa
My past is everything I failed to be.
Fernando Pessoa
If you cannot live alone, you were born a slave.
Fernando Pessoa
Multipliquei-me para me sentir.
Fernando Pessoa
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
We almost always live outside ourselves, and life itself is a continual dispersion. But it's towards ourselves that we tend, as towards a centre around which, like planets, we trace absurd and distant ellipses.
Fernando Pessoa
Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions.
Fernando Pessoa
What Hells and Purgatories and Heavens I have inside of me! But who sees me do anything that disagrees with life--me, so calm and peaceful?
Fernando Pessoa
To choose ways of not acting was ever the concern and scruple of my life.
Fernando Pessoa
